Page 56 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 3. The sociocultural context 43

Fuji High School allowed all sessions observed to be video recorded, while at
Tokyo High School, video recording could not be arranged, and details of class-
room interaction were recorded as fieldnotes. (Pause lengths in excerpts from To-
kyo High School classrooms are estimates. Pauses were not recorded in fieldnotes
unless considered significant.)
Based on the study outlined above, I present characteristics of communica-
tion in Japanese classrooms in the following sections, using the framework intro-
duced in the previous chapter. Silence and talk in Japanese classroom practices
are therefore discussed in terms of linguistic, socio-psychological and cognitive
domains of communication.

3.2 Linguistic domain

3.2.1 Modes of communication

One of the characteristics of classroom practices in Japanese schools is a strong
tendency towards using the written mode of communication. In the study at Fuji
High School and Tokyo High School, a reliance on learning through the written
mode of communication was observed. At Fuji High School, for instance, most
of the teachers made extensive use of the blackboard. Writing on the blackboard
was usually done in a similar manner to which lecture handouts are made, with
summaries of important points and the use of underlining or coloured chalk to
illustrate the hierarchy of concepts being taught. What was written on the black-
board by the teacher was then copied by students into their notebooks. It ap-
peared that students gave priority to copying what was on the blackboard rather
than responding or listening to the teacher, since those who were found sleeping,
reading comics or chatting would occasionally stop these activities to copy as-
siduously. Teachers also stopped talking occasionally and waited a few minutes in
silence for students to finish copying. Below is an example: 2

(1) [Fuji High School Class 2 Japanese History]
1 Teacher: And then next, (3.5) in the textbook that first part there are
2 many foreign issues. So let’s have a quick look at these. (1.3)
→ 3 Uh:m, (2.4) Is it all right to rub this out?
4 (0.3)
5 ((a student raises her hand to signal ‘not yet’))

2. The utterances in the excerpts in this chapter, except the ones from English classes, were
translated from Japanese into English by the author.