Page 75 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

62 Silence in Intercultural Communication

selves or to their life outside the classroom. This point can be illustrated by a
comparison between Australian and Japanese approaches to the interpretation of
literary work in schools. Australian schools encourage students to apply what was
taught in the classroom to their experiences in the outside world, as illustrated in
an assignment for Contemporary English for Year Twelve, on the theme of Peace
and War. This assignment was obtained from a student who was a Year Twelve
student in Sydney in the year 2000:

(14) [English Assignment 2000 (Peace and War)]
Collect eight different pieces of supplementary material from a variety of sources
(print media, radio, television, poetry, song, film, novel short story etc.)
You must present two pieces of material for each of the four main aspects of the
Contemporary Issue: Peace and War.
For each provide:
1. Type of source
2. Name of source
3. Author, playwright, producer, poet etc.
4. Title
5. Date
6. Relevant aspect of the Issue (Peace, Comradeship, The Horror of war, Survival)
7. Summary of the material
8. Links to the text
9. Knowledge you have gained about Peace and War from this material
10. What is the material saying about Peace and War in Contemporary Australian
society?
This task requires students to personalise the theme and the content learned in
the classroom. Items such as 8, 9, and 10 above particularly require students to
think about the relevance of what they learn in the classroom for the world in
which they live as well as for themselves as a member of a community. In addi-
tion to this task, the teacher in charge of this unit of study asked students to give a
short speech on one of the materials chosen for the written assignment above.
As Milner & Quilty (1996) explain, in Australia, students are invited to ex-
press their personal reactions and responses to the materials for their classes:

Australian teachers say they prize intelligence in argument and in the expres-
sion of complex, novel, personal responses to experience. These abilities in Asian
educational systems, however, often indicate negative qualities such as hostility,
a lack of respect for superiors, and an ignorance of the proper educative models.
(p. 98)