Privileging of Speech in EAPand Mainstream University Classrooms A Critical Evaluation of Participation

Privileging of Speech in EAP and Mainstream University Classrooms: A Critical Evaluation of Participation CONSTANCE ELLWOOD The University of Melbourne Victoria, Australia IKUKO NAKANE The University of Melbourne Victoria, Australia Perceptions of Asian students as silent have been widely debated in the disciplines of applied linguistics and education These debates have been largely concerned with the extent to which essentialised notions of Japanese culture are in operation and the consequences for teaching and learning The silences of students and the expectations of their teachers for speech have been viewed as a clash of perceptions and understandings based on intercultural difference The two studies presented here complexify this view Drawing on data from interviews with Japanese students and their Australian teachers, we compare and contrast their perceptions of talk and silence in English for academic purposes classrooms and mainstream university seminars We discuss a common expectation on the part of both parties for speech and a common frustration over an ongoing tendency to silence on the part of the Japanese students We also show, in a comparison of the two groups, the students’ varying attitudes toward oral participation Our discussion implies the need for a re-examination of the devaluation of silence, with the aim of contributing to improved communication practices between teachers and students in intercultural classrooms P erceptions of Asian students as silent have been extensively debated in the disciplines of applied linguistics and education However, research into the effects of these perceptions on teacher and student classroom behaviour has generally not been the focus of inquiry Previous approaches to Asian student silences have tended to view them as nonproblematic from the Asian point of view, attributing student silences to cultural traits and a heightened privileging of verbal restraint in their cultures These silences have then been opposed to expectations for speaking that dominate the classrooms of many Western cultures In much higher education and TESOL research, the silences of students and the TESOL QUARTERLY Vol 43, No 2, June 2009 203 expectations of their teachers for speech have been viewed as a clash of perceptions deriving from cultural differences and widely accepted as a problem arising from the normative behaviour of Asian students The two ethnographic projects discussed here, focusing on Australian teachers and Japanese students, complexify this view The article discusses a common expectation on the part of both parties for speech and a common frustration over the ongoing tendency to silence, or nonparticipation, on the part of the Japanese students By presenting some ways in which this tendency is at times itself produced by the expectations brought about by dominant stereotypes, we aim to demonstrate ongoing misconceptions of Asian students’ silences (Kember & Gow, 1991; Marriott, 2004; Samuelowicz, 1987; Yap, 1997) held by many Australian educators Additionally, a comparison of the two groups of students in our studies suggests that students’ attitudes and performances may vary across contexts and shift with time Our discussion aligns with approaches which see classrooms as heterogeneous and which recognise the complexity of identity It also demonstrates that improved communication practices between teachers and students are possible following a re-examination of the privileging of talk and deprivileging of silence in intercultural classrooms DIFFERENTIAL PRIVILEGING OF SPEECH AND SILENCE—EAST VERSUS WEST Our article addresses an overarching stereotype which contrasts a silent East with an articulate West (Giles, Coupland, & Wiemann, 1991; Jaworski, 1993) In each of our classroom ethnography projects, which took place in English-medium intercultural classrooms in English-native-speaking contexts in Australia, this stereotype was represented in the talk of teachers Silence came to our attention when both the teachers and Japanese students referred, unsolicited in interviews and questionnaires, to a noticeable absence of oral participation or talk from the Japanese students, particularly in situations when voluntary participation was expected, such as in classroom discussions It is this absence of oral participation which we refer to as silence in this article The silence-talk contrast thus emerged as a key issue in our studies and was discursively linked to an East-West contrast We begin with a brief review of this East-West contrast in relation to the privileging or deprivileging of talk and silence, before demonstrating, through a discussion of our data, the problems which can arise when this dichotomised view plays out We note that, although the use of the terms East and West is problematic because it overlooks the complexities of belief systems and communicative behaviour in social encounters across indefinite numbers of speech communities, these terms precisely capture the presence of stereotypes which we aim to challenge in our discussion 204 TESOL QUARTERLY ON THE PRIVILEGING OF SPEECH IN THE WEST Dominant in many Western cultures is an expectation for spoken interaction In the United States, for example, it has been noted that “a premium [is placed] on spoken English as an indicator of functionality” (McKay & Wong, 1996, p 592) Cameron (2000) suggests that oral communication skills acquired through education can be regarded as cultural and symbolic capital which give students access to power and authority A similar privileging of speech is the norm in Australia, although, in the educational context, this is a relatively recent expectation; prior to the late 1960s and 1970s when the Australian education system introduced “a major redistribution of speaking parts in the classroom” (Poynton, 1996, p 105), Australian L1 classrooms were strongly teacher dominated and the voices of students were only heard when directed to speak by the teacher The change, originating in Britain, was based on the view that understanding, and ultimately knowledge, came about through talk in interaction (see, e.g., Barnes, 1976; Cameron, 2000; Mercer, 1995) This expectation for speech is clearly a norm of academic culture (Flowerdew & Miller, 1995) in the Australian universities in our studies, even though, as has been pointed out (Singh & Doherty, 2005), this norm appears to be one aspect of an “imagined pedagogy” (p 53) deriving from a reification of heterogeneous Western academic practices ON THE DEPRIVILEGING OF TALK IN JAPAN The Japanese have long been described as attaching strong values to, and as making abundant use of, silence (Clancy, 1986; Doi, 1974; Lebra, 1987; Saville-Troike, 1984) Lebra (1987, p 343), for example, stated that “there are many indications that Japanese culture tilts toward silence.” More recently, Davies and Ikeno (2002) suggest that silence is more commonly found in various social contexts in Japan than in the West, and that it has “played a very important role in creating harmony and in avoiding direct conflict” (p 53) However, many of these claims are not based on empirical research and the view that Japanese people value and make prevalent use of silence has been challenged (Anderson, 1993; Mizutani, 1997) Additionally, stereotypes of Japanese as silent or indirect have been questioned by a number of scholars (including McCreary, 1992; Miller, 1994, 2000), as has a tendency to situate Japanese and Americans as polar opposites (Miller, 1994) When it comes to classroom practice in Japan, however, there is both convincing discussion (Anderson, 1993; McVeigh, 2002) and empirical evidence (Kato, 2001; Nakane, 2007; Yoneyama, 1999) that a culture of silence prevails on the part of students, although primary education appears to be an exception (Anderson, 1993; Kato, 2001; Yoneyama, 1999) In Nakane’s PRIVILEGING OF SPEECH IN EAP AND MAINSTREAM CLASSROOMS 205 (2007) study of two high schools in Japan, it was found that students rarely participated orally and their utterances consisted of no more than one sentence or one word This appears to have implications for Japanese students’ behaviour in Western universities However, further classroom-based studies which examine naturally-occurring classroom discourse are needed to adequately address such aspects of Japanese classroom practices SILENCE OF ASIAN STUDENTS IN WESTERN CLASSROOMS The privileging of silence, or deprivileging of talk, associated with the East has been strongly debated in studies examining Asian students’ communicative behaviour in Western educational contexts Students from Asia are consistently described as reticent, quiet, silent, nonparticipatory, and passive in fields such as TESOL (Lucas, 1984), English for academic purposes (Jones, 1999; Thorp, 1991), higher education (Ballard, 1996; Ballard & Clanchy, 1991; Liu, 2000), and intercultural studies (Marriott, 2000; Milner & Quilty, 1996) A number of these studies use the blanket term Asian to refer to students from any of several Asian countries (Adams, Heaton, & Howarths, 1991; Ballard & Clanchy, 1991; Jones, 1999; Liu, 2000; Milner & Quilty, 1996) Most of these studies explore reasons why these students are silent, or reticent and how this problem of student silences can be dealt with The possibility that silences might be viewed positively is rarely suggested Some exceptions are Jaworski and Sachdev (1998), La Forge (1983), and Rowe (1974) A number of studies in Australian higher education attempt to counter these notions of passive Asian learners by detailing the impact of cultural values and sociocultural norms of discourse on student silences in Western universities and in English as a foreign language (EFL) programs Some scholars highlight the impact of the differing sociolinguistic norms applicable to the role of classroom teacher As Jones (1999, p 248) points out, the expectations on Asian students to be “respectful and silent recipient[s] of the teacher’s knowledge” may lead to this behaviour in the new educational environment of Western universities Additionally, it has been suggested that Asian students may regard asking questions as timewasting and lacking consideration for other students (Milner & Quilty, 1996; Thorp, 1991), as a face-threatening act for the teacher if he or she cannot answer adequately, or as a face-threatening act for themselves because questioning can be interpreted as a lack of ability or intelligence (Milner & Quilty, 1996) Other scholars suggest that the value given to modesty and the importance of face are crucial factors in understanding the silences of Asian students; for example, from Hong Kong (Tsui, 1996) and Japan (e.g., Anderson, 1993; Turner & Hiraga, 2003; Yoshimoto, 1998) 206 TESOL QUARTERLY On the other hand, outright critiques of this stereotype of reticent, silent and passive Asian students can be found in the literature Discussions by Kubota (1999) and Marriott (2004), for example, draw attention to the impact of the discursive constructions of, or stereotypes and myths about, Japanese culture, and the need to rethink the validity of cultural labels in the light of both relations of power and of research findings Littlewood (2000, p 33) also refers to findings that East Asian student silences not “reflect the roles they would like to adopt in class,” whereas Zhou, Knoke, and Sakamoto (2005, p 297) refer to the significance of the educational contexts which engendered a “reluctance to participate” by the Chinese background students in their study and highlight the importance of recognising the co-constructed nature of silence in the multicultural classroom Our article aims to extend these critiques while investigating ongoing and pervasive stereotypes of Japanese student behaviours Following an overview of our studies, we present the perspectives of Australian teachers and Japanese students on speech and silence in order to demonstrate the consequences of a differential privileging of silence and speech across cultures Additionally, we will go beyond usual ideas of cross-cultural mismatch to explore how miscommunicated expectations about silence and speech may negatively affect teaching and learning experiences in intercultural classrooms Importantly, we demonstrate a commonality of teacher and student perceptions that to some extent challenges what has previously been seen as a mismatch between students’ and teachers’ expectations in Western classrooms OVERVIEW OF THE STUDIES Existing studies which problematize stereotypes of Japanese students, such as Kubota (1999) and Marriott (2004), have been primarily critical discussions of literature Our article approaches the same issue through classroom ethnographies We draw on data from two research projects carried out independently by each of the researchers at two different universities in Australia Each study had a different initial focus: classroom identities (Study 1) and classroom communication (Study 2) However, in both studies, silence emerged as an issue of significance The silence of the Japanese students was commented on, both by Japanese students themselves and their Australian teachers, as marked and dispreferred behaviour in comparison with the oral contributions of their Australian or European peers It also came to our attention that similar infrequent or absent voluntary participation by some Australian and European students, seen in our classroom observations, was not mentioned by our participants, leading us to focus on perceptions of silence in the classroom PRIVILEGING OF SPEECH IN EAP AND MAINSTREAM CLASSROOMS 207 Our joint analysis was conceived when we realised that we had shared views on the classroom silence issue despite being ostensibly insiders of different groups: Ellwood, born and educated in Australia, was a program coordinator and teacher of English for academic purposes (EAP), and had taught Japanese students for many years; Nakane, born and educated in Japan, was a teacher of Japanese in Australia and a postgraduate student at an Australian university at the time of the research Ellwood had been aware of the discomfit experienced by fellow EAP teachers with the silences of the Japanese students in their classes in Australia, whereas Nakane had been aware of the pressure to talk as well as uncomfortable silences in English-only university seminars in Japan, where students were told not to be tongue-tied At the same time, silence emerged as a key issue of concern to participants in each of our studies These parallels and differences presented us with the invitation to compare and contrast our data Study The first project, Study 1, carried out over a 3-month semester at a large urban university in Australia, used interviews and 40 hours of audiorecorded classroom observations to investigate aspects of identity in the English language learning classrooms of a full-time foundation studies course Participants in the study included Australian teachers and 15 students, of whom (4 female and male) were from Japan, the others being from France 5, Germany 2, Italy 1, and China The students were enrolled, for a period between months and year in a full-time EAP program that was part of a university-to-university exchange The program officially targeted students whose English scored in the range IELTS 5–6 (TOEFL 510–550) The Japanese students had limited previous experience of an education system which differed from the one to which they had been enculturated, although four students had spent up to a month in the United States or Australia (for further information, see Table 1) The four female teachers had between 16 and 36 years’ teaching experience and spoke English as their first language The classes took place in rooms of various sizes, ranging from barely big enough to hold a group of 12 to large enough for 30–40 students Seating was generally in a U-shape, with students moving to form small groups as tasks required Because of the structure of the English program, with four separate courses, and the variable conditions of enrolment by the students, only three French and six Japanese students were enrolled in one class (that of Teacher 2)1; and one German student had 208 The use of numbers to refer to teachers has been used to facilitate links to the quotations from teachers in the data discussion section TESOL QUARTERLY TABLE Information About Japanese Student Participants Student participant pseudonyms Study Noriko Rie Yoko Tomoko Katsuyuki Noboru Study Tadashi Hitoshi Michio Hiroshi Naoki Ichiro Satoru Kenichi Hideki Sachiko Aya Yukari Megumi Takako Reiko Naomi Chie Yoshimi Setsuko Miki Gender Age Period of time in Australia or another English-speaking country prior to the commencement of the study (in years unless noted otherwise) female female female female male male 21 20 22 21 20 23 month high school exchange in the United States month visit to the United States as high school student month university exchange in the United States weeks high school exchange in Australia male male male male male male male male male female female female female female female female female female female female 27 24 20 22 22 20 20 25 28 23 23 22 29 21 20 20 21 24 27 24 10 7.5 1.5 2.5 5.5 6.5 2.5 2.5 3.5 4.5 2 1.5 2.5 been exempted from another class (that of Teacher 4) During the observations, the researcher took a seat at the back of the classroom and did not interact with the participants unless addressed Teaching was carried out using communicative methodology, with teachers offering a variety of topics for whole-group discussion and as illustration of teaching points, as well as setting up small-group activities in which it was presumed that students would interact through speech The goals of the curriculum were to prepare the students for academic study in Australia Drawing on distinctions suggested by Flowerdew and Miller (1995), the curriculum required explicit induction into some of the norms of local culture (the local setting), some explanation but little direct induction into academic culture other than in academic writing, and only an implicit induction into the ethnic Australian cultural norms which affect teacher and student behaviour Thus, for example, although students had lectures and excursions related to Australian history and parliamentary structure, issues related to classroom participation, such as the expectation to PRIVILEGING OF SPEECH IN EAP AND MAINSTREAM CLASSROOMS 209 volunteer answers or the accepted norm of overlapping talk in discussion, were not addressed The lecturers and students in the English language program were approached with requests to participate, and all but one German student agreed All students and teachers were interviewed, in English, by the native-English-speaking researcher, on three occasions over the semester on a range of matters relating to identity, including their experiences and perceptions of classroom communication The length of each interview averaged 40 minutes The issue of the Japanese students’ silences arose in these interviews and is discussed here in relation to classroom observational data Semistructured interview questions such as “How was the class?” were designed to elicit the “lived experience” (Taylor & Bogdan, 1984, p 9) of the students A qualitative research approach was followed (Davis, 1995), employing prolonged observation, field notes, and interviews Triangulation between observations and interviews was used to enhance credibility (Davis, 1992) of the study Study In the second project (Study 2), the original focus of which was classroom communication, 20 Japanese students (11 females and males) studying in mainstream university programs2 were approached by the researcher and agreed to participate The number of students from different disciplines were as follows: humanities 12, commerce 3, science 2, industrial design 2, engineering Lengths of stay in Australia ranged from 1.5 to 10 years (further information on the Japanese participants is given in Table 1) Although two had come to Australia at a young age with their Japanese parents and had been schooled in Australia, they were not excluded from the sample because they also described themselves as being silent in class.3 The students were interviewed twice, in Japanese, by the native-speaking Japanese researcher, about classroom communication Interviews were semistructured and included reasons for studying in Australia, aspects of Australian university life, and interaction in tutorials and lectures The issue of silence emerged as key in the student interviews, and, questionnaires—designed to investigate the Japanese students’ self-perceptions of their silences compared with their lecturers’ perspectives—were 210 In order to be accepted for entry into university, they had achieved an IELTS overall band score of at least 6.5 with a minimum of 6.0 in each band (TOEFL score of 575 with TWE 4.5) These students also commented that they had predominantly mixed with what they referred to as ajia jin (Asian background) peers during their schooling TESOL QUARTERLY distributed to lecturers university wide via e-mail Thirty-four responses were obtained The deliberately broad questions were (1) What is your impression of Japanese students in Australian university classrooms? (2) What are the particular strengths of Japanese students in your classes? (3) What are the particular problems of Japanese students in your classes? As a means of further investigating the issue of silence, three Japanese students were observed in separate classes (34 hours total over one 3-month semester) and follow-up interviews were conducted with these students as well as their lecturers (two males and three females), all of whom spoke English as their first language and had extensive teaching experience in Australian tertiary education The observed sessions were seminar-style classes, where seating was normally U-shaped, with the number of students ranging from to 23 In most classrooms, peer students were local native-English-speaking Australians; that is, the Japanese students had few nonnative-speaker classmates, except for one class, where nonnative speakers took up about one-third of the class of around 12 Classes were video- recorded, and the transcriptions were used for discourse analysis, drawing on conversation analysis and Erickson’s (2004) microethnography (reported elsewhere Nakane, 2005, 2006, 2007) The Japanese students’ predominant tendency to be silent was confirmed by the researcher who took notes in the back corner of the room The comparison of the sample groups can be considered as an instance of cross-sectional sampling The student participants in Study were at an intermediate stage of their language learning and had little previous exposure to the target culture, whereas the students in Study were advanced-level learners of English with substantial exposure to the target culture Through a comparison of these two groups of learners, we aim to comment on learners’ varying perceptions of the value of speech and silence in the classroom A number of variations between the two studies may be relevant to our findings; for example, the nature of the other students in each learning context, educational goals, English proficiency levels, and amount of exposure to Australian classroom culture Although some of these variations are outside the scope of our article, others will be discussed later as possible explanations for the differences between the two groups POSITIONALITY AND TRANSFERABILITY As Davis (1995) and Canagarajah (1999) note, researcher positionality in ethnographic studies has a significant impact on outcomes This article, as stated earlier, grew out of a shared questioning of views of Japanese students’ classroom silences, despite the researchers’ different backgrounds: Constance Ellwood, born and educated in Australia, and PRIVILEGING OF SPEECH IN EAP AND MAINSTREAM CLASSROOMS 211 teaching English language to Japanese students in Australia; Ikuko Nakane, born and educated in Japan and teaching Japanese language in Australia Over time and through numerous discussions on our research, there developed a working partnership (Davis, 1995, p 12), combining a shifting and complex range of emic and etic stances which demonstrate the fluidity of researcher positionality Having two researchers cross-analysing data and using various data sources ensured a triangulation process (see Flowerdew & Miller, 1995) which contributes to the credibility (Davis, 1992) of our findings Additionally, qualitative methods were drawn on as part of the microethnography in Study The silence of the Japanese students was observed and measured in terms of regularity of occurrence, duration, and position in a sequence of events (reported in Nakane, 2005, 2006, 2007) In Study the researcher roughly noted the proportion of participation of the students However, the differences were so marked—zero participation from some students—that further measurements were not deemed necessary The interview comments presented here were selected as representative of the issue of silence as perceived by the participants; that is, as representing “the immediate and local meanings of actions, as defined from the actors’ point of view” (Davis, 1995, p 432) FINDINGS: TEACHERS’ EXPECTATIONS FOR SPEECH IN AUSTRALIAN CLASSROOMS The privileging of talk is evident in both our studies It can be clearly seen in the communicative language teaching approach which seeks active student participation in L2 classroom activities Thus, one teacher in the EAP research context (Study 1) explains her idea of good students Well for me in a class like that, good is the ones who participate and, you know, how So you see that they’re participating You need to get some kind of feedback [ ] You need to be able to know if they’ve understood what’s happening and so, you know, they need to ask questions or answer questions, I think (Teacher 1, Study 1) Active participation, that is, asking or answering questions in the whole-class setting, is required here both for students to be seen as good and for teachers to see that communication is happening In a similar way, noise levels were often seen as an indicator of participation: I hate whispering I want noise and hubbub; [there’s] this thing about teachers wanting to feel that there’s noise, there’s talk, there’s things happening (Teacher 2, Study 1) 212 TESOL QUARTERLY However, the difficulty with getting Japanese students to speak led one teacher in Study to generalise that It’s hard teaching Japanese students, you know, because they give so little [ ] you’re having to find ways of, um, generating communication (Teacher 3, Study 1) The pressure on teachers in language classrooms to encourage all students to speak appeared to lead these teachers to engage in attempts to control external factors including requesting room changes and rearranging the layout of the desks, in the hope that this would encourage participation These practices give some indication of teachers’ levels of discomfort with student silences (discussed by Nakane, 2006) and the value attached to oral communication in contemporary Australian classrooms A common practice, in Study 1, was to engineer membership of groups for group work tasks For one teacher, this practice was based on her perception of a lack of confidence in the Japanese: I have to engineer a little bit yeah [ ] giving the Japanese more confidence, you know, when they’re faced with Europeans (Teacher 1, Study 1) This engineering normally involved creating a mix of students from different cultural backgrounds However, the mix initiated by teachers was prioritised over interpersonal relationships as experienced by students One student commented on the damaging effects on her speaking confidence of a German classmate Sometimes when I saw her face is so irritated or something, because Japanese students couldn’t make opinion well and it takes long time to say something so sometimes, especially small group, I can see her face, or expression, when I see those face expression I feel more nervous or more frustrated, I can’t make opinion more (Yoko, Study 1) In such cases, and despite the teacher’s good intentions, a failure to recognise the power imbalances among students (discussed, e.g., by Leki, 2001; Norton, 2000) and the co-construction processes of talk, silence, and identity (Kramsch, 2002; Zhou et al., 2005) means that Japanese student participation was not necessarily enhanced The students’ silences were seen by some lecturers and teachers as a consequence of the culture of receptive learning in Japan, reflecting the stereotypical interpretation of Asian student silences in previous studies As seen in the teacher comment from Study 1, critical thinking is one of the areas where it is assumed that Japanese students are weak due to the 216 TESOL QUARTERLY learning practices into which they have been acculturated This trend was also demonstrated in the responses from lecturers (Study 2: questionnaire) to the question “What are the particular problems of Japanese students in your classes?”: Often silent when other students engage in discussion It does not always mean language difficulty, one suspects culture that expects only instruction An inability to be critical of the material they learn, to question authority, and to speak to their teachers in a relaxed manner [ ] A less authoritarian and hierarchical educational system is needed so that Japanese students can develop to the fullest extent of their developmental potential These comments suggest that this aspect of Japanese education is regarded as somewhat inferior and that the causes of silence lie solely with the Japanese In this section, we have demonstrated that the silences of Japanese students had a negative value in the eyes of both groups of Australian teachers and that these silences tended to be understood as a consequence of the culture of education that the Japanese students bring to Australian classrooms The first point suggests that voluntary oral participation is indeed part of the “hidden curriculum” (Auerbach & Burgess, 1985, p 3) of Australian classrooms, whereas the second reveals the maintenance of a subtle form of racism (for further discussion, see Ellwood, 2009) However, the two groups of teachers differed in their responses to the Japanese students’ silences: the mainstream university lecturers were more concerned with the need to protect the student’s face, whereas the language teachers tended to nominate the Japanese and to instigate a variety of structural changes in the classroom We show that these responses were not always experienced as constructive by students and, indeed, that the responses were predicated on a lack of awareness of the Japanese students’ desires to speak JAPANESE STUDENTS’ DESIRES TO BECOME ARTICULATE Contrary to the perceptions of the teachers previously described, that Japanese students prefer being silent to participating, Japanese students in our studies expressed much more nuanced desires in relation to speech For the Japanese students in the EAP group (Study 1) there appeared to be a strong desire to be articulate in class A number of students in Study admired the ability of the European students to speak up: I wish that I could be like them but I’m really shy, really, really shy so I don’t think I can be like them but I wish I really wish (Katsuyuki, Study 1) PRIVILEGING OF SPEECH IN EAP AND MAINSTREAM CLASSROOMS 217 It’s interesting to have same class with another French students because I think they have their own opinions strongly because, usually, when they uh—when teacher ask some questions, French people say their opinions soon, very soon, but Japanese students just listening or thinking or—- (Yoko, Study 1) Noriko (Study 1) gave her reason for coming to study English in Australia, saying, “I’d like to say my opinion clearly or my thought so clearly and categorized or so,” and for Yoko (Study 1), becoming articulate in English meant identity transformation, as she wanted “to be the person who has the opinion” and “to be the person who can say.” However, another student, Rie (Study 1), acknowledged that the “aggressive” speaking skills that she associated with English speakers would need modification once she returned to Japan Rie: I want to be international, I wanna be a world international student, it means I get out of the Japanese culture […] Researcher: Do you—but there must be things about Japanese culture that you admire so you don’t want to forget Japanese culture you? Rie: Mmm Researcher: Or you want to forget it and just completely change? Rie: A complete change Researcher: You want to change completely ? Rie: …Nnnnnn ….but if I—if I go back in Japan, I will be a Japanese style […] I don’t mean that Japanese culture is bad, I don’t mean that, but if I study or work in the international world, I need a skills to be international person so I have to study or learn the more skills to develop English or speak out- out my opinion so (Rie, Study 1) For the high-level group (Study 2), there was a more discriminated understanding of talk and silence in the classroom as well as an awareness of the impact of different contexts on their own speech production For example, Aya expressed regrets about her silence: This, to be honest, with this subject, I don’t have any confidence, so you know, yeah, I want to speak But even if I want to speak more, I can’t (Aya, Study 2) At the same time, her comment implies that she was not always silent Indeed, she was described to “be the first one to speak” and to “vigorously talk” by two of her lecturers Another student in Study mentioned that she thought “it would be good to speak” in class, whereas a third student indicated that he enjoyed talking in front of people provided he was well prepared Several other students in Study commented on the ease with which the Australian students participated: 218 TESOL QUARTERLY Megumi: Well, surely I envy them [Australian students] for being able to talk like that The moment a question is there, they come up with their own opinions so quickly Takako: And we don’t (Study 2) Some students from Study observed that the Australian students “just put their thoughts into words and speak straight away” (Yukari) and “don’t keep it to themselves” because “it’s not a big deal” for them to speak up (Chie) It is interesting to note that the desire to be articulate was expressed more passionately and explicitly by the Japanese participants in Study It was also presented as a somewhat idealistic goal; relatively few of their comments were based on their current classroom experiences Those in Study 2, however, did assess their lack of speaking in relation to their current classroom experiences, and thus presented a rather more objective assessment of their participation Additionally, Study participants were critical of the unquestioned appreciation of volubility in Australian classrooms STUDENTS’ SELF-PERCEPTIONS OF SILENCE In the face of this desire to be articulate, the Japanese students in both studies were aware of their marked silence in Australian classrooms They drew on a number of factors to explain their struggle to overcome their silences These included the preference for teacher-nomination, difficulty with precision timing of turn-taking, the need to reflect before speaking, a fear of making mistakes, and a fear of standing out from others Comments from students in Study 2—“usually I end up observing If I am nominated, I say something” (Reiko) and “normally the only time I open my mouth is when she [the lecturer] nominates me” (Tadashi)—clearly show that many Japanese students tend to rely on nomination to speak These comments also indicate the students’ awareness that being nominated is the least preferable option in Australian classrooms An implicit criticism is evident in the language used such as “end up” and “the only time I open my mouth.” Furthermore, the need for nomination is explained by the students themselves in terms of Asian norms of behaviour: If there are a lot of Australians in class, the class is more lively I mean they all participate But Asians don’t participate much, including myself We still haven’t adapted to raising our hands immediately to respond to a question in class I think all Asian students are like that (Naomi, Study 2) A student (Study 1) commented on Japanese schooling practices and their effects on the Japanese students’ speaking practices in the EAP classroom She observed that PRIVILEGING OF SPEECH IN EAP AND MAINSTREAM CLASSROOMS 219 [The European students] answer the question volunteer—volunt—voluntarily but Japanese student if—only if I [am] asked from teacher “what is your answer?” I can say that, but if they are no chance to point out me, [be] point[ed] out [by] the teacher, maybe Japanese students in answer the question the—because mmm—in elementary school and junior high school, teacher always point out the student to ask, to ask the answers so I am very—we are get used to the style but another nationalities students, they speak freely, not pointed out (Rie, Study 1) This observation is consistent with the participation pattern found in Japanese high school classrooms (Kato, 2001; Nakane, 2007) and goes some way toward explaining the struggle of Japanese students to speak in Australian classrooms (Marriott, 2000, 2004) In relation to the voluntary participation, Japanese students also reported difficulties in finding the right timing to take a turn The following comments illustrate this perceived problem: When we have discussion, uh, even if I have things I want to say, I don’t know when I should speak you know, the timing yet (Tadashi, Study 2) In an interaction, even before I finish talking, they [Australian students] come in, interrupting me (Naoki, Study 2) When teacher ask some questions, French people say their opinions soon, very soon, but Japanese students just listening or thinking or (Yoko, Study 1) The issue of varying turn-taking norms in relation to student silence has not yet been widely explored empirically (For recent works, see Nakane, 2005, 2007.) It appears to be related to the issue of power in mixed-group dynamics in ESL classrooms raised by Norton (2000) Similarly, the need for pause time (for an early discussion see Rowe, 1974) did not appear to be recognised as relevant by teachers in our studies However, although subtle aspects of classroom communication, such as turn-taking, are not academic skills in which the EAP students are specifically trained, our studies indicate that the students are expected to have acquired such skills for their academic success (For a similar mismatch, see Atkinson & Ramanathan, 1995.) Lack of voluntary participation was also explained in terms of threat to face In Study 2, a student referred to the shameful aspect of saying the wrong thing and to weaknesses being made public 220 TESOL QUARTERLY How can I put it? In Japan, saying something wrong, saying something wrong is, well, not quite bad, but somehow it’s, like, shameful If you say something wrong, you feel embarrassed, and that sort of thing I still have with me (Yukari, Study 2) Implied in this comment—“I still have with me”—is an expectation that Japanese students leave behind this sense of shamefulness about saying something wrong when they come to study in Australia In Study 1, one of the students more explicitly takes responsibility for accommodating to Anglo/European norms: They [European students] don’t hesitate to make a mistake but Japanese people hesitate to make a mistake It’s my problem to solve it, it is a my problem Make a mistake is not, uh, hesitate things (Rie, Study 1) At the same time, however, the student acknowledged that speaking one’s opinions in class could also be regarded in Japan as “rude or selfish,” saying that she sometimes would not answer the teacher’s questions even though she knew the answer because “It’s fake but sometime it needs in Japanese culture.” This view, in turn, relates to a concept of modesty discussed by a number of scholars in relation to Japanese students (e.g., McVeigh, 2002; Turner & Hiraga, 2003; Yoshimoto, 1998) As illustrated, Japanese students in our studies were aware of the negative perceptions of silence in Australian classrooms However they struggled with their self-perceived inability to speak, and sought to overcome the barriers to becoming an articulate speaker of English A tendency to blame themselves for their lack of ability to conform to the talkprivileged classroom norms and to explain this in terms of Japanese culture and classroom practices was salient among the students in the EAP program The mainstream group, although also referencing Japanese culture, appeared to express more complex views on the privileging of talk in Australian classrooms DEVELOPING A CRITICAL APPROACH TO CLASSROOM PARTICIPATION The EAP students tended to admire, without question, the speaking skills of the European students in the class, whereas the mainstream higher proficiency level students had begun to question the nature of participation in their Australian classrooms In particular, they questioned the relevance or significance of the comments made by some of their peers For example, Kenichi (Study 2) criticised his Australian PRIVILEGING OF SPEECH IN EAP AND MAINSTREAM CLASSROOMS 221 classmates for asking questions even though the answers were “written in the book,” saying, “if you ask about what is written there, it is rude Not even embarrassing but rude, don’t you think?” Such critical views about Australian students’ participation were not uncommon, as another Japanese student commented: My impression is that [ ] because they can use English, they, like, say what they don’t need to say How can I put it? Well, for example, going off the track But because they are native speakers, they can say even tedious things as much as they like, right? (Yoshimi, Study 2) Related to this, several students indicated their attitude to resolving problems in learning In both of the following comments, silence indexes responsibility for one’s own learning I don’t worry [about participation marks] too much (Laughs) Well, but I wonder what it is to participate For example, maybe there are students who always ask questions, but if you know [the answer], you don’t need to ask questions, right? (Naomi, Study 2) Whether you think you are not good enough or something else, you know, it’s definitely a difference, I think If it’s me, if I didn’t know something, I would think I should have covered that area myself But other people probably tend to ask the lecturer if they don’t understand (Kenichi, Study 2) Although the comments by Study participants may be taken as a strategy for justifying their ongoing silence, which is dispreferred in Australian classrooms, we would like to suggest that these comments reflect the development of a third space identity in which can be seen the maintenance of cultural practices and a putting into question of the practices of the target culture (Kramsch, 1993, p 233) The aspects which this new identity appear to include are a critical view of the requirement to participate through speech, as seen in the previous comments, as well as the development of strategies to increase participation Not only did Study students express critical and complex views of talk and silence but they also gave varied accounts of their own classroom performance One of the students in Study 2, for example, was aware of being a highly articulate participant in a subject on translation but silent in a subject on education Another student began to speak more in class as she got to know the tutor better outside the classroom Some students organised their speech turns before class so they could contribute with greater ease in 222 TESOL QUARTERLY classroom discussions However, in the comments and through the observed performance of students in Study 2, we see evidence of somewhat subtle and compromised participation The third space in which the students in Study appear to be positioning themselves is still a peripheral and marginalised space The responsibilities to create opportunities to speak lie with the Japanese students themselves because their teachers leave them to their silence, believing that their wish to stay silent must be respected DISCUSSION Japanese Students’ Views on Talk and Silence The studies revealed that Japanese students desire, and attempt, to speak, although they also struggled with their silence Although Japanese students in the mainstream university classes in Australia showed signs of crossing the gap between desire and performance, and expressed critical views of speech, both groups presented a similar awareness of the negative values attached to silence in the classroom, and explained their silence by referring to the difficulties of breaking away from the Japanese mode of classroom communication However, any direct link between culture and behaviour must be questioned Just as cultural explanations may be used erroneously by teachers to explain student silences, cultural explanation can also be used by students to justify their silences or even to identify as silent students The situation is highly complex, and numerous other factors—including, but not limited to, participant relationships, gender, sexuality, and discussion theme—appear to play a role An example of this trend can be seen in the case of Katsuyuki, Study As quoted earlier, Katsuyuki described himself as “really shy, really, really shy.” He attributed his perceived silence in part to his gay sexuality (discussed in Ellwood, 2006) However, in contrast to Katsuyuki’s self-perception, two of the teachers viewed Katsuyuki as “not reticent […] one of the key players” and “the least shy person in the class […] verging on noisy.” Equally heterogeneous views can also be seen in the two students from Study 2, discussed in the previous section, who were aware that their oral participation varied depending on the subject matter of the class or their sense of comfort with the lecturer These examples also point to a greater level of self-awareness around speech and silence in the case of the Study participants Importantly, this self-awareness appears to be accompanied by a re-evaluation of silence and speech Differences in perceptions of speech and silence are revealed through a comparison between the two groups The EAP group began with high expectations of becoming articulate (see also Marriott, 2004) and expressed a strong desire to acculturate into the talkPRIVILEGING OF SPEECH IN EAP AND MAINSTREAM CLASSROOMS 223 privileged atmosphere of Australian classrooms, whereas the mainstream university group appeared to develop a more critical view of the nature of participation and to develop a pragmatic approach to the possibility of participation In this way, the mainstream group appears to redefine and resolve the expectations of the EAP group This redefinition and resolution seems to involve a greater acceptance of the behaviours into which they had been enculturated Indeed, Kubota (1999) refers to the struggles of power in westernisation in which “the Other adopts cultural distinctiveness” (p 11) Nevertheless, this position continued to keep them on the margins, where they appeared to resign themselves to negative perceptions of their academic commitment and abilities in the light of the talkprivileged framework of Australian education How we explain this difference between idealistic desire and critical evaluation of speech and silence? Is it simply a matter of time? Is this critical view to be expected of all EAP students after sufficient exposure to classrooms of the target culture? Or are other contextual factors in play? First, the difference between the two sample groups may appear to be a product of the differing English proficiency levels The higher proficiency group had a better grasp of English, enabling them a more indepth understanding of what was going on in their classroom This, in turn, allowed them to become aware that sometimes the content of their peers’ comments was not so relevant or valuable In this way, the higher proficiency group could let go of unrealistic expectations and be more confident of their academic abilities On the other hand, the lower proficiency group was not in as good a position to objectively assess the value of their peers’ contributions Another factor impacting on the different evaluations of speech and silence may be the educational goals of each cohort The mainstream students did not need to prove their speaking skills in order to be evaluated as competent students; once they have been accepted into a mainstream university program, it is their academic abilities that are evaluated Indeed, positive evaluations of essay writing skills were given by both Japanese students and lecturer questionnaire respondents On the other hand, the EAP students had stronger stakes in their speaking performance because it was precisely their language skills that were evaluated Related to this was the fact that the EAP group’s positioning as language learners may have entailed some sense of demoralization/marginalization within the university sphere Because the goal of any foundation course is to gain access to mainstream university courses, the EAP students were still in the first stage of a trajectory toward further study; they had not yet achieved the status enjoyed by the mainstream group whose English level was recognised by virtue of university entry In this sense, the EAP students may have identified with inadequacy and thus been more strongly invested in the need to be accepted as an articulate speaker 224 TESOL QUARTERLY Different perceptions of speech and silence may also result from increased opportunities to analyse and reflect on the academic performances of themselves and others The mainstream students in Study had been exposed to Australian university classroom discussions at least for a few semesters and had learned that classroom participation was not the only indicator of academic success On the other hand, the EAP students had had no exposure, at the time of the study, to mainstream Australian university classrooms and therefore no opportunity to critically analyse the “imagined pedagogy” (Doherty & Singh, 2005, p 53) of Australian classrooms It may also be claimed that the difference between the groups derives from the different backgrounds of the interviewers The interviewer in Study was known to be an EAP teacher and therefore belonged to the group whose face may have been threatened if Australian classrooms were criticised On the other hand, the interviewer in Study had travelled the same path as the students in terms of language learning and academic study In her presence the students may have risked loss of face if they spoke about their negative silence in Australian classrooms Additionally, the language used in the interviews (English for Study and Japanese for Study 2) may have influenced the results in that the lower proficiency group may not have been able to articulate the complex and nuanced attitudes toward silence expressed by the higher proficiency group There thus appears to be a number of possible explanations for the different perceptions of classroom talk and silence between the two groups Further longitudinal studies that examine the same cohort of students, following them through their transition from an EAP to a mainstream program, would offer the opportunity to further scrutinise the relationship between the duration of education and shifting perceptions of classroom talk Nevertheless, the varying behaviours of the two groups of Japanese students in our studies complexify interpretations of their behaviour as a product of Japanese cultural practices and challenge a simple dichotomy of silent East and articulate West Students and Teachers in Intercultural Communication We argue that widely perceived silences of Japanese students in the West not occur simply because Japanese students privilege silence over speech, but rather that classroom discursive practices, both in their home country and in Australian classrooms, sometimes work to discourage them from speaking, despite their desires to transform themselves into articulate, expressive, and international personalities Our studies have revealed that Australian teachers, often being unaware of the desire and struggle of the Japanese students to speak, and perceiving silence as a lack of competence or commitment, may PRIVILEGING OF SPEECH IN EAP AND MAINSTREAM CLASSROOMS 225 work counterproductively in terms of both the students’ desires and effective pedagogy For example, teachers may feel uncomfortable and leave silent students alone Or they may accommodate their programs to the imagined capabilities of students, but misconstrue those capabilities To some extent, although the teachers in Study were more assimilationist, those in Study can be said to take a laissez-faire liberal multiculturalist approach These approaches have been critiqued by Kubota (2004), who proposes “critical multiculturalism” (p 37), an approach which not only recognises cultural differences but also problematizes the power struggles of minority groups Furthermore, the different approaches to student nomination may not be in the best interest of students who, as they leave the EAP classroom and start to participate in the L1 communicative context, need skills to participate voluntarily rather than by nomination (see Atkinson & Ramanathan, 1995) Finally, our studies suggest that the Australian teachers’ attitudes to their Japanese students’ silences tended to reinforce the effects of Japanese schooling experiences Rather than fear silence, we believe that if teachers become aware of the desires of students, they may be able to alter some of their classroom communication practices to promote more effective teaching Our study also suggests reconsideration of the role of oral participation versus the role of silence in both EAP and mainstream education For example, Jaworski and Sachdev (1998) report that Western secondary school students associated silence with productive learning, and Rowe (1974, 1987) and Tobin (1987) demonstrate that increased teacher wait-time may improve the quality of oral participation by students In addition, as Valdés (1998) demonstrates in a study of an ESL class in the United States, silence may also be used as an important tool for classroom management Finally, as Zhou et al (2005, p 303) point out in their discussion of “a unidirectional perspective of cultural difference,” the assumption that Asian students have the responsibility to develop their capacity to participate orally rests on a refusal by the mainstream to develop their own capacity for silence As Kubota (2004, p 47) mentions, “social transformation involves a two-way process; that is, not only should the people on the periphery generate insurgent voices, but the centre should also attend to such voices.” Thus, although our studies, to some extent, demonstrate that culture—in terms of educational practices—may be one of the factors influencing the silences of Japanese students, it is also important to recognise that the students did want to talk, they sought to counter habituated sociocultural norms which impacted on their possibility of talk, and they appeared to develop over time a more critical understanding of what it meant to talk Our study also suggests that the teachers need to become more conscious of the “hidden curriculum” (Auerbach & Burgess, 1985, 226 TESOL QUARTERLY p 3) which privileges classroom participation in contemporary Western universities and which may lead to misunderstandings about the purpose and goals in both EAP and mainstream education contexts In other words, reconsideration, in teaching and learning, of “what makes it good to talk” (Cameron, 2000, p 183) may be necessary CONCLUSION In this article, we have sought to demonstrate that, contrary to the stereotype of the silent Japanese student, Japanese students desire speech However, the perceptions of “silent East versus articulate West” held by the Japanese students and their Australian teachers reproduced and reinforced the silence of Japanese students co-constructively We suggest that an awareness of this desire and the associated struggle is needed by teachers and has consequences for classroom management Teachers’ misperceptions of silence as resulting from a lack of competence, shy personality, or lack of commitment to learning are linked to essentialized notions of Japanese culture which are problematized by the varying perceptions of our students toward speech and silence Additionally, the possibility that silence might be viewed positively is rarely considered It is hoped that this article will support TESOL and higher education teachers and researchers to critically reflect on the roles of speech and silence in intercultural classrooms ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank Ross Forman, Hiroko Itakura, and our anonymous reviewers for their valued comments on earlier versions of our manuscript THE AUTHORS Constance Ellwood is a lecturer in communication skills in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Her current research interests include the discursive construction of teacher and student subjectivities, and the ethics of speaking and listening in both intercultural and monolingual contexts Ikuko Nakane is a lecturer at the Asia Institute, the University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, where she teaches Japanese language, Japanese sociolinguistics, and translation Her main 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