Page 76 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

Chapter 3. The sociocultural context 63

However in Japanese education, it seems that interpretation of literary materials
generally does not go beyond the text itself. Thus, commonly observed questions
require students to find the relevant sections in the written text which explain the
meaning or the referent of key words or concepts. Thus,

(15) [Fuji High School Class 5 Modern Japanese Extract from a handout]
‘Kokoro’ by Soseki Natsume Handout 6
1. Write the reading of the following Kanji.
2. Give the meanings of these words.
3. What does ‘Stopping that’ (p. 170 top 14) refer to?
4. Regarding K’s ‘resolution’ (p. 170 bottom 5), what ‘resolution’ did ‘I’ think it was?

In this way, although this class was, in fact, more interactive than other teacher-
centred classes, the main interactional goal seemed to be to gain a clear and ‘cor-
rect’ understanding of who did what and who felt what in the story. In fact, in
both high schools, it was common to find questions regarding referential issues,
such as “Who found out all the ‘circumstances’ from the beginning to the end?”
(Fuji High School, Japanese Class) or “K’s dilemma is here. This question is often
asked in the test. ‘Here,’ what does that refer to?” (Tokyo High School, Japanese
Class). In the following excerpt, for example, the teacher is checking the ‘correct’
understanding and interpretation of the text taught the previous week:

(16) [Tokyo High School Class 5 Modern Japanese]
1 Teacher: Why did he travel to Boshu? What was it? It was written in ( ).
2 (pause – around 2.0)
3 Teacher: Uh, this was not something written in the main text in the
textbook.
4 For what did he travel to Boshu?
5 (pause – around 4.0)
6 Teacher: Do you remember? ‘My’ big purpose was to disclose
7 his feelings toward the lady to K, right?
Overall, in the Japanese high school study, oral activities which would involve
application or personalisation of abstract concepts or information given during
the class were rarely observed. However, as already discussed, it is important to
be aware that students may be given opportunities to express their opinions and
personal responses in writing, depending on the teacher preferences.
In addition to personal views and experiences, the verbal expression of rea-
soning processes and describing how one arrived at one’s thoughts and ideas ap-
pear to be limited in Japanese classrooms compared to Australian classrooms.
According to Matsuda (2000), in Australian classrooms, students are often asked