Post 218: Conversation Analysis of the Role of Silence and Turntaking in Asian cultures

Post 218: Conversation Analysis of the Role of Silence and Turntaking in Asian cultures

In the United States, American students are encouraged to express their opinions in class. American students eagerly raise their hands so that the teacher can give the American student a chance to speak about the classroom topic. If a student is silent, the teacher interprets this to mean the student has not been listening and not paying attention in class. If an American student is consistently silent and not raising his hand, an American teacher will call on the silent student to speak to see if that student has been paying attention to the lesson.

In online classes, students are required to participate a minimal number of times in the discussion forums to increase community, bonding and a sense of belonging in the online classroom. Students who participate a lot are giving compliments by the online teachers while students who do not particpate are given a low grade. 

However, in Asian countries, frequent speaking by students is not encourage by the teacher. In Asian culture, being quiet means a student is respectfully listening to the teacher. The teacher in Asia is seen as the expert on the subject, so she alone has the sole right to speak on the subject. Any student who talked to much was considered a 'show off'.

Other scholars have reported similar distrust of talk in Japanese and Chinese 
cultures influenced by Confucianism and Taoism. Confucius rejected eloquent 
speaking and instead advocated hesitancy and humble talk in his philosophy of 
the ideal person (Chang, 1997; Kim, 2001). As one of our Taiwanese students 
told us, “In America, sometimes students talk about half the class time. Com- 
pared to my classes in Taiwan, if a student asked too many questions or expressed 
his/her opinions that much, we would say that he or she is a show-off.” 
(Nakayama, 381)

When I was a teacher evaluator, my job was to mentor the less experienced ESL teachers at the school. We had a college graduate who had just gotten her MA in ESL and she was teaching a group of Japanese students for the very first time.

She sat on the teacher's desk and eagerly started asking the Japanese students their opinions on various current events of the day like, "Should Clinton or Trump be President of the United States?" Or even conversational topics like, "Who is your favorite actor/actress?" or "Would you date Tom Cruise even though he is so short?" or "Why is the Beattles still so popular decades after their songs have been released?" This young ESL teacher thought if she asked interesting, relevant, current questions, her students would eagerly raise their hands and give her their opinions thus practicing speaking conversational English, which was her goal.

But nope, you could hear a pin drop. The entire Japanese class just sat there waiting patiently for her to continue talking. Not one student raised his hand. Nobody said a word. So for the entire class period, this young ESL teacher did all the talking and talked about her favorite movies, actresses and answered her own questions on why she thought the Beattles was so popular decades later. After class, mystified, she asked me why her students were so quiet. She thought she had done something wrong in her ESL class.

That's when I explained to her the different in conversational analysis turntaking between America and Japan. So how different countries view silence, view conversational turntaking, affects intercultural communication between an ESL teacher and her Asian students. Knowing the culture of the students helps the ESL teacher adapt her teaching methods to accommodate her students. She later learned she had to teach the Japanese students to express their own opinions. She had to tell them that it was American culture to speak up frequently in class. After the Japanese students understood this, they spoke up enthusiastically just like American students.

If you are an online teacher and you have ESL students in your class who do not participate much in your forums, you will have to email them or give them a Zoom presentation on American culture and how American students are required to participate a lot in class to get a good grade.