Page 95 - Silence in Intercultural Communication

82 Silence in Intercultural Communication

(23) M2: Well I think Australians need to be talking, or you could also say they
like discussions.
I: Is that so. But there must be shy people, you know. Would they like
discussions?
M2: Not so many Australians are shy, I think... compared with Asian people
who are shy, they are somehow totally //different... // Even if they are
shy, they would say their opinions.
F8: //totally different//
[23:353-356, M2&F8]

Another student’s comment also reflects this contrast and furthermore suggests
that there may be something more than an issue of language proficiency in his
own silence.

(24) I: What is your impression of Australian students in class?
M5: Well, you know, they speak a lot. Of course, compared with international
students, there may be a role of language proficiency in it, but even if
I were studying at university in Japan, I don’t think I would be so
enthusiastic. [8:111-112 M5]

From the Japanese students’ point of view, speaking in open discussions by ac-
tively volunteering as their Australian peers do is something ‘different’ from their
own behaviour. Yet at the same time, they also perceive not speaking in open
discussions as a ‘problem,’ not only because they are aware of the expectations in
Australian university classrooms but also because participation is often a part of
the course assessment.
In the lecturer responses to the questionnaire conducted at the University
of Sydney, half the respondents mentioned the low frequency of participation,
or silence, of the Japanese students in their classes, even though my research fo-
cus on silence was not explicit in the questionnaire. In the responses, silence was
generally mentioned as one of the ‘weaknesses’ of the Japanese students in their
classes. A similar pattern can be found in the results of the Macquarie University
study (Braddock et al. 1995), where 50–60% of the lecturer respondents found
Asian international students to be quiet, silent and not actively asking questions
in lectures and tutorials. Supporting this view, only 3% of the respondents agreed
with the statement “Students ask many questions.”
Thus, the image of silent Japanese students seems to be held by both Japanese
students themselves and their lecturers. The question is, however, whether the
silences described by Japanese students and lecturers are the same. In the lecturer
comments in my own survey, similar silences through the various participant
structures discussed above can be found. To begin with, Japanese students were