East Asian Perspectives on Silence in English Language Education

Jim King, Seiko Harumi

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781788926751
• eBook ISBN: 9781788926782
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Psycolinguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Silence is a key pedagogical issue in language education. Seen by some as a space for thinking and reflection during the learning process, for others silence represents a threat, inhibiting target language interaction which is so vital during second language acquisition. This book eschews stereotypes and generalisations about why so many learners from East Asia seem either reluctant or unable to speak in English by providing a state-of-the art account of current research into the complex and ambiguous issue of silence in language education. The innovative research included in this volume focuses on silence both as a barrier to successful learning and as a resource that may in some cases facilitate language acquisition. The book offers a fresh perspective on ways to facilitate classroom interaction while also embracing silence and it touches on key pedagogical concepts such as teacher cognition, the role of task features, classroom interactional approaches, pedagogical intervention and socialisation, willingness to communicate, as well as psychological and sociocultural factors. Each of the book's chapters include self-reflection and discussion tasks, as well as annotated bibliographies for further reading.

1East Asian Perspectives on Silence in English Language Education: An Introduction

Seiko Harumi and Jim King

How does silence function in second language learning? Do learners deliberately or perhaps unconsciously use silence as a strategy in the language classroom and, if so, why? When language students engage in second/foreign language (L2) learning, they use whatever resources they bring into classrooms. Silence may be one such interactional resource, used to signal the psychological or linguistic difficulties they encounter, or it may be an expression of solitary activity through reflection, enabling learners to process their own thoughts. It can also be viewed as an indicator of the social and cultural perspectives which can act as frameworks for second language acquisition. What is without doubt is that when we look closely at this issue, it is clear that learner silence is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that emerges from a whole gamut of sources and hence defies easy generalisations. This book offers an insight into this complexity in order to build a better awareness and deeper understanding of the silent episodes which occur within East Asian language classrooms and beyond.

This introductory chapter argues the case for why education-oriented research into the relatively neglected issue of silence has the potential to have a significant impact not only on second language acquisition (SLA) theorists, but also on classroom practitioners and education policy planners alike. The chapter sets out the main goals of the collection, provides a historical overview of silence-oriented research since the 1980s, illustrates a wide range of definitions of silence and considers some of the fundamental issues and questions surrounding the topic of language learning silence by highlighting the significance of contextual factors. It also discusses the methodological challenges and approaches to data collection used in the study of silence. For example, how best can the multi-formed phenomenon of silence be defined by researchers working within specific contexts, and should silence be considered a positive or a negative phenomenon in education? This first chapter in the collection also provides a detailed overview of each of the studies that make up the edited volume.

Why a Book on Silence?

The topic of silence has great relevance both for academics researching international education and SLA, and for language teachers in their daily interactions with learners. It is only quite recently that recognition has grown around the crucial role that silence plays in the L2 classroom, particularly within East Asian contexts, and this nascent awareness has led to some innovative research focusing on silence both as a barrier to successful learning and as a resource that may in some cases facilitate language acquisition. Silence is a pedagogical issue that touches all who teach. However, its key role in language classroom practices has not been fully explored. Over the last few decades, the multiple meanings and uses of silence in L2 contexts has increasingly begun to draw the attention of researchers and practitioners, who have revealed its hidden dimensions and pedagogical value in enhanced classroom interaction.

There are two main reasons why this volume focuses on the use of silence by East Asian learners specifically. Firstly, despite a growing number of recent empirical studies and a trend towards a more communicative approach in classroom practice, the silence of East Asian learners is still considered by many practitioners to be something entirely problematic and to be a niche topic for researchers both in mono- and multilingual settings. While this book helps challenge the stereotype of the silent, passive East Asian learner, it also provides an acknowledgement that learners' backgrounds, in conjunction with other variables, do play a role in shaping classroom discourse behaviour. The key here is to base one's conclusions about silence on reliable, empirical research. This volume presents the results of such research and, as it does so in a contextually valid manner, we can learn much about the silences of language learners in other settings too. Wherever there is L2 learning, there are sure to be some silent learners. Secondly, prior to the appearance of this book, no single collection of studies focusing on East Asian learners had attempted to show a complete picture of classroom silence seen from interdisciplinary perspectives and using a range of theoretical approaches. With this in mind, the idea for the current collection emerged from discussions between the editors following a talk organised by the Japan Foundation in London (see King, 2016a). As applied linguistics researchers who share a fascination with silence in language education, we were becoming increasingly aware of the groundswell of interest in this topic and the need to share a state-of-the-art account of current research on silence within L2 settings. We were delighted that such a strong and internationally diverse set of applied linguistics researchers responded to our endeavours and embraced our theme to make this book possible.

The volume's scope includes work that is informed by cognitive, sociocultural and interactional perspectives. It brings together empirical works that explore silence in a wide range of educational settings and that collectively illustrate the diversity of innovative theoretical approaches. Some of our contributors offer a fresh perspective on ways to facilitate classroom interaction while at the same time embracing the phenomenon of silence. The book touches upon key pedagogical concepts, such as teacher cognition, the role of L2 task features, classroom interactional approaches, pedagogical intervention and socialisation, willingness to communicate (WTC), as well as other psychological and sociocultural factors. Taken together, the collection's findings and insights on pedagogical implications drawn from its empirical studies will help researchers and classroom practitioners to gain a thorough understanding of key issues related to silence in relevant and diverse educational contexts.

Silence: A Historical Sketch and Conceptualisations

Silence is an issue that touches all who teach. Whether encouraging reticent learners to participate or having to quieten the boisterous, silence plays a key role in educators' daily classroom practices. Silence in the L2 classroom has been perceived as a complex, ambiguous, yet meaningful communicative resource. Recent perspectives on classroom silence have shed light on the significant roles it has played in second language education, focusing on its varied roles across cultures and aiming to understand its often fuzzy and multilayered meanings and functions. This research has also considered a range of strategies for responding to silence, taking into account its ambiguity and different uses by learners and teachers alike, as well as exploring ways that silence might be utilised as a linguistic resource to facilitate learning.

Research since the early 1980s has tended to draw attention to culturespecific and group-based usages of silence through ethnographic studies, often from intercultural perspectives (e.g. Gilmore, 1985; Lebra, 1987; Philips, 1972; Saville-Troike, 1985). At a micro-level, sociocultural differences in the expected length and tolerance of pauses and silences have been extensively discussed from interactional perspectives (e.g. Scollon & Scollon, 1981; Tannen, 1985). At around the same time, further studies on classroom silence conceptualised it as a teacher's waiting time after posing a question or otherwise soliciting a response (e.g. Rowe, 1986; Shrum, 1985; see also Smith & King, 2017); these began to raise awareness of the facilitative role of silence in educational contexts as a pedagogical strategy for increasing the quality and quantity of learner talk. What was clear from this early work was that silence takes on a variety of forms, from the micro-silences of pauses and hesitations, to the macro-silences of non-participation in communicative events, through to the subtler silences of under-elaboration and topic avoidance.

Among these early studies, those focusing on the use of silence in intercultural communication offered an intriguing perspective on how silence fulfils various communicative roles, depending on the specific culture and communicative setting in which it occurs. The studies provided a fresh perspective on how misunderstandings can occur when participants from different cultural backgrounds interact. These misunderstandings can be traced to different cultural expectations and interpretations in the use of silence and talk during interaction (Lehtonen & Sajavaara, 1985; Nakane, 2012; Spencer-Oatey & Franklin, 2009; Tannen, 1985). While the length of pauses and silences in interaction can be a source of cultural misconceptions, the mismatch of expectation and tolerance of the pace of overall interaction, turn-taking practices and meanings attributed to communicative style can result in serious misunderstanding or negative stereotypes (Scollon & Scollon, 2012). For example, the ethnographic study by Scollon and Scollon (1981) found that Anglo-American English speakers considered the longer silences of Athabaskan Indian people to indicate that they were being uncooperative and therefore regarded this use of silence negatively, as a sign of interactional failure. The Athabaskans, on the other hand, considered the talkativeness of Anglo-American English speakers to be rude and aggressive. Similar interactional misconceptions are illustrated by Tannen (1985), who observed how the avoidance of silence during a Thanksgiving dinner by two New Yorkers of Jewish background was interpreted as dominance rather than cooperation in interaction by other participants from differing cultural backgrounds. Illustrating that the idea of the silent ‘East' and talkative ‘West' is a somewhat simplistic generalisation, longer uses of silence by Finnish people, when compared with Anglo-Americans, were reported by Lehtonen and Sajavaara in their 1985 study (see also Sajavaara & Lehtonen, 1997). Carbaugh (2005) argues that Finns may not intend to convey lack of interest in communication through the use of longer silences.

Tolerance of silence has been studied from intercultural perspectives in varied situational contexts. For example, in business settings, Yamada (1997) reported longer use of silence, lasting around five seconds, by the Japanese participants in a formal Japanese business meeting, compared with less than one second in the case of a US business meeting. Also in an intercultural business context, a lack of familiarity with other participants' communicative style was explored by Fujio (2004), who reported that Japanese managers tended to be able to tolerate longer silences than their North American colleagues, who saw silence as a sign of discomfort and frustration. Although few in number, some studies have been conducted on the use of silence in intercultural communication in wider sociocultural contexts and in other languages. Mushin and Gardner (2009) analysed inter-turn pauses among Garrwa language speakers from Aboriginal communities in Australia and found that a 1.5-second gap indicated trouble in communication. Interestingly, this seems to mirror Watts' (1997) conversation analysis of British interactants, in which he suggests 1.5 seconds is the central point on a continuum between 1.3 and 1.7 seconds, after which silence becomes marked (cf. Jefferson, 1989).

Looking at academic contexts, Turner and Hiraga's study (2003) on tacit interactional style and lack of initiation by Japanese international students in tutorial sessions in British academic contexts explored silence as a source of misunderstanding, in this case interpreted by UK academics as lack of willingness to communicate as part of study procedures. This finding mirrors Nakane's (2007) research, which explored the use of silence by Japanese overseas students in Australia and illustrates how their use of silence was interpreted in a negative way by Australian lecturers, who saw the absence of talk as a sign of withdrawal from interaction. Similarly, a study by Harumi (1999) illustrated British informants' negative interpretations of the video-recorded classroom silences displayed by Japanese learners of English, seeing them as signs of boredom or lack of interest.

Some non-Japanese English language teachers express the desire to have faster interactional exchanges with Japanese students; when these are not forthcoming, feelings of frustration can result (King, 2016b; Morris & King, 2018). This phenomenon is also reported by Harumi in Chapter 3 of this book. On the other hand, silence may be regarded as an invisible or unmarked phenomenon, as explored by Morita (2004) in a study on Asian students' academic discourse in a Canadian university. Morita illustrates how students actively negotiated multiple roles and identities in the classroom, even when they appeared passive or withdrawn. This reflects King and Aono's (2017: 494–495) idea of the ‘active state of silence', in which learners may not be producing talk but are nevertheless cognitively engaged. In a recent study on silence in the intercultural collaboration of a Dutch and a Chinese university as part of a scientific international research project, the Dutch researchers attributed Chinese researchers' silence in everyday conversation to a lack of communication (Verouden & van der Sanden, 2018). For example, failing immediately to provide feedback or to reply to comments was interpreted as detrimental to collaboration when seen from a Dutch point of view, as was silencing the voices of subordinates (2018: 145). In Chapter 6 of this collection, Karas and Faez observe similar societal roles of teachers, who are seen as figures of authority in L2 classrooms, triggering the use of silence by learners in Chinese contexts.

Recognition of the crucial role that silence plays in the L2 classroom has also inspired research into multiple aspects of second language learning and amply demonstrates its relevance to evidence-based language teaching. Pioneering research outside the field of applied linguistics paved the way for methodologically and conceptually varied empirical L2- oriented studies from the 1990s onwards, which situated silent behaviour within various specific educational contexts. In particular, increasing attention was paid to reticent language learners in East Asia (e.g. Bao, 2014; Harumi, 2011; King, 2013a, 2013b; Liu, 2009; Tsui, 1996) as well as to overseas East Asian international students (e.g. Liu, 2002; Nakane, 2007).

A small number of scholars have chosen to explore the facilitative role of silence and learners' silent periods in mainstream and second language education (e.g. Granger, 2004; Jaworski & Sachdev, 1998; Li, 2001; Reda, 2009), while others have considered silence as an example of invisible pragmatic transfer which becomes a possible source of misunderstanding (Nakane, 2007). By focusing on silence's varied communicative and social meanings in L2 classrooms across cultures, a key theme to emerge in research is how participants' perceptions of silence may differ significantly. While some may interpret silence as a space for critical reflection and the absorption of content, others within the SLA community acknowledge that non-participatory silence by language learners has the potential to impede L2 development by limiting target language interaction and output. In light of this, an increasing number of studies have been carried out to seek better pedagogical practices aimed at enhancing the oral participation of silent learners (Talandis & Stout, 2015; Yashima et al., 2016; Zhang & Head, 2010).

Given the historical development of research perspectives on silence, a growing body of recent studies on its role in second language education has applied varied perspectives on its conceptualisations (e.g. Bao, 2014; King, 2013a, 2013b; Smith & King, 2017, 2018) as both an inhibitive and a facilitative element in interaction. More specifically, Bao has stressed the need to draw attention to the distinctive roles of silence as a voluntary productive communicative resource able to enhance L2 learning opportunities as ‘modes of learning' (Bao, 2014: 2) and of reticence as withdrawal from learning. Following this distinction between silence and reticence, this collection further conceptualises and approaches silence as a phenomenon ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• 1 East Asian Perspectives on Silence in English Language Education: An Introduction
• 2 Silence, Talk and In-betweens: East Asian Students' Responses to Task Challenge in an Australian University
• 3 Approaches to Interacting with Classroom Silence: The Role of Teacher Talk
• 4 Silence and Anxiety in the English-Medium Classroom of Japanese Universities: A Longitudinal Intervention Study
• 5 Examining L2 Learners' Silent Behaviour and Anxiety in the Classroom Using an Approach Based on Cognitive- Behavioural Theory
• 6 Communicative Language Teaching and Silence: Chinese (Pre-service) Teachers' Perspectives
• 7 Silence in Japanese Classrooms: Activities and Factors in Capacities to Speak English
• 8 Willing Silence and Silent Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in the Chinese EFL Classroom: A Dynamic Systems Perspective
• 9 Conclusion: Silence in EFL Classrooms Revisited the Human–Dolphin Interface
• Index