In tutorials and lectures you don't like to ask questions in front of a lot of other students; to save face, you wait till after the lecture.

— Daniel

I think the Chinese students maybe more shy and they won't speak a lot in the lecture or tutorial; because in China we only have the lectures, and in the lecture we have to keep quiet, we're used to keep quiet in the lecture, to listen to what the lecturer say...

— Anne

Did it take you very long to become more active, and more comfortable about asking questions, and about challenging other people's ideas, that sort of thing?

Ah - yeah, I can't say challenging; discussing, yeah, to some degree...

What about if you disagree with what somebody says?

Ah - if I - disagree, I just raise disagreement, but you know ... sometimes after the tutorial you go and ask your question - perhaps it is your personal opinion or view; I have a chat with the tutor, to see if it's a question of my understanding, or whatever. That's what I would do

— Luke

Do you find the tutorials useful?

Actually I find, the tutorials sometimes just have presentations from each student - no talk from the tutor, just talk from the students. And each tutorial, just the student give speech, and the tutor will say something, but very little....

— Terrie

While pair and groupwork is increasingly used in China, some students believe that they learn from teachers rather than from peers; this conception may filter out any learning through peer discussion – it is not 'work'.

— Jin & Cortazzi (2006), p. 19.

I think it's very important for learners to contribute to the learning and indeed have some of their own ideas and state their own needs. I also see a balance where sometimes you have students who say: "Can you please give us the information. We don't want to hear from the other students". In fact, this happened Monday night when I was teaching. One of them who's not Asian, who's South American actually, said: "Oh, I'd really like you to do that activity you said you'd do if you had time at the end. Could you make sure we have time to do it?" And I said: "Um, I like to get the students' opinion", but she said: "Some of the students like to hear your opinions."

So this is an interesting perspective which we also have to be aware of when we're teaching from a Western point of view....

— Education lecturer ( Schmidt 2005)

The tutorials that are unsatisfactory for you, are they ones where you don't like the material, or - what makes them unsatisfactory?

Couldn't understand what they explain ... um ... the tasks ... they did not explain it and I couldn't understand things...

— Sandy

And the activities in the tutorial not really quite useful for the exams or assignments. Because you want to graduate from university, the mostly important things is the exam and assignments.

So the tutorials are not always helpful for knowing about exams and assignments?

Maybe at the end of the semester the last 2 or 3 tutorials will be helpful, but not a lot.

— Terrie

Kim (2002) argued that whereas many European Americans assume that silence indicates lack of thought, many East Asians believe that silence is beneficial to high levels of thinking. Furthermore, in Kim's empirical work, she found that whereas European Americans, on average, were not adversely affected when instructed to talk through solutions to problems, Asian Americans were. In other words, the Asian Americans in Kim's study tended to exhibit higher cognitive efficiency when silent than when speaking.

This finding suggests that even though many Western instructors believe that silence indicates passivity and lack of thought, for a significant number of students, the opposite may be true.

( Tweed & Lehman, 2003, p. 149)

Cultural profiles of Australia and China

based on Hofstede (2005)

PDI: Power-Distance Index IDV: Individualism MAS: Masculinity UAI: Uncertainty Avoidance Index LTO: Long-Term Orientation For definitions of Hofstede's 5 parameters, see Geert Hofstede Cultural Dimensions Resources .

Table 2. A comparison of the students' key communication outcomes and methods

Source: Tan & Goh (2006), p. 661

In China they use chalk and blackboard; here, the teachers are more relaxed and there is no big gap between the teachers and students. Teachers here are quite relaxed, sitting on the desk while teaching the students - sometimes too relaxed. And the students sitting around me, also quite relaxed.

You think sometimes it goes a little bit too far in that direction?

Yes.

— Diane

Australian students are very relaxed in their behaviour in class; they tap their feet in class - there's one student who even puts his feet up on the table; I don't think that's acceptable. Maybe it doesn't bother the lecturers, maybe they think it's normal; but I don't think it's very polite. And when the lecturer asks a question, he doesn't even wait for her to finish, but cuts in on him. I don't like that.

— Pearl

The students reported two types of difficulties: unfamiliarity with discussion as a learning and teaching method and the perceived role of instructor.

Coming from an educational background where interaction with peers or learning through discussion almost did not exist, it was natural for a Turkish student to sit in the classroom without participating. Limited exposure to discussion-oriented courses in their home country made such courses new and anxiety-provoking for them. For them, the ideal learning situation was one in which the instructor was more in control of the teaching activity and the discussions. This teaching style was motivating and increased their active oral participation:

This instructor said: "I will discuss such and such in this session" and started to speak. She explained her idea and gave an example. Then she repeated the main idea. If someone attempted to ask some trivial question, she said, in a nice manner, "No, no, that is not our topic now." . . . And she focused everyone's attention to the main idea again.

— (Gamze, Interview 1, October 10, 2002)

The responses of the study participants also referred to the value of listening in learning. They constantly listened, reflected, and evaluated the contributions of others, which demonstrated their active mental involvement even when they were silent. Their silence or less frequent oral participation did not indicate a lack of interest or knowledge but showed that they found listening as a more effective learning method than speaking in some cases:

I don't like speaking in that class. I like listening. While I am learning something, I listen instead of speaking.

— (Pinar, Interview 3, October 10, 2002)

Such views indicated the importance of active listening, which is usually overlooked in U.S. graduate courses, as an effective learning strategy.

Strongly influenced by the teacher-centered Turkish culture, study participants viewed the instructors as the main sources of knowledge and the authority figure. They expected the instructors to be more effective in shaping the flow of discussions and making them more useful to the learners. Out-of-classroom relationships with professors became important, especially when the students were not orally active in the class. Although building a relationship with the instructors did not necessarily result in higher participation, it had a positive impact on participants' general motivation for and comfort level in the course.

( Tatar, 2005, pp. 344-5 – formatting modified)

The study participants perceived a big difference between their understanding and U.S. instructors' and students' understanding of participation, which led them to make a distinction between participation and meaningful participation:

People in here [U.S. students] see class participation somewhat different, something like describing their own experiences. I mean, without worrying about whether it is meaningful or not.

— (Erhan, Interview 5, November 3, 2002)

The distinction that Turkish students made between participation and meaningful participation was centered around academic content, applicability, practical usefulness, relevancy, originality, and usefulness to others. The participants viewed oral participation as presentation of formally acquired academic knowledge, which was quite different from U.S. instructors' and students' perception of classroom participation as a less formal event in which to freely share ideas. Therefore, they did not feel comfortable expressing their ideas without doing careful thinking and preparation to assess their content value in advance....

The students perceived it as inappropriate to contribute through their personal experiences unless they thought that they would be useful to others. Likewise, they expected other contributors to present information valuable and relevant to every member of the class that would lead to new learning. These perceptions were reflected in the silence of the study students when their ideas did not meet their criteria.

All participants shared general rules for oral classroom participation that valued silence over talk, as in Cem's statement:

Maybe it is something that originates from our own culture. Listening is better than speaking; I mean we are listening-oriented people, not speaking .

— (Interview 2, October 4, 2002)

These rules were (a) talking when you are knowledgeable enough, (b) talking too much could mean showing off, and (c) being selective about what to share.

( Tatar, 2005, pp. 343 – formatting modified)

Most Chinese students in this study expressed preference for seminars to lectures and enjoyed that 'there are no stone walls between the professors and the students'. However, their understanding of and decision-making about class participation were largely influenced by their previous cultural and pedagogical experiences in China. In other words, class participation appeared to hold different meanings for Chinese and Canadian students.

Specifically, Chinese students perceived that they took the class 'very seriously' while their local counterparts seemed to behave casually in class: they looked relaxed, they cut in the discussions any time, they said whatever they wanted to say, and so on. In contrast, Chinese students tended to consider carefully their ideas/questions and the reactions they might evoke before they spoke out. For instance, some Chinese students didn't ask questions in class because they thought 'it's our own problem for not understanding the class', they 'didn't want to bother others', they worried that their questions 'could slow down the class schedule, or might not interest other students', or they didn't want to 'lose face' in front of other students because of their confusions about the class.

The following quotes by two students are among many that illustrate this point well:

[I]n China we emphasize... it's the way I was educated – you should have something solid about this thing [and only then do you] speak up. Like you express your ideas in certain... certain logic or system or whatever, like it should be a mature idea... But here I see some people [just say it] and I like that, but I am not brave enough... Some people are like [just saying] whatever is in their minds... I wish I had the courage, but I don't.

(interviewed in English)

In China, when you answer questions, teachers would comment on your answer, like it's good or not good... So, as student, you would kind of evaluate your answer before you speak out. If you didn't answer right, you wouldn't be that confident later... But this is not a problem for students here.

(interviewed in Chinese)

( Zhou et al., 2005, p. 296 – formatting modified)