Classroom interaction

You can see the tutor and the student, just like they can connect with, and students can feel free to ask questions. (Sky 2)

This was Sky’s verdict on what teaching and learning should be like in the university. In this section I shall examine the different affordances offered for connection.

6.3.1.

Being audible in lectures

6.3.1.1.

Asking questions

In spite of their belief that there was an invitation to ask questions and even “voice out your opinion” (Li Ming 1), from the beginning most participants did not have a high expectation that it would be available to them, as it exposed them to risk. Very public shame could arise from L2 limitations of production (questions not understood by the lecturer) or reception (not having understood content readily perceived by others):

If I don’t understand it I don’t know if it’s my language problem and I didn’t understand the teacher’s English or if it’s my own understanding. I’m afraid if I point it out and everyone else understands, it’s my own language and then I’ll make myself a fool. (MB)

Another inhibiting factor for Chinese students was strong cultural injunctions against such practice throughout their previous educational experience:

We think the bad manner, when the teachers talk very important so [if] you ask some question, because it’s also you spend other people’s time, you spend other classmates’ time, and you have some problem and question, you can ask the teacher after class. (Connor 1)

in China it is forbidden and it is very, very rude. (Saul 1)

Scott revealed insight into culturally influenced different interpretations of the situation. Students from other countries sought instant gratification:

They all think, I don’t know actually, I have to know right now. I have to get understanding right now. They don’t think this is my weakness. If I solve the problem that is my strong point maybe. (Scott 1)

The final comment once again reveals the complexities around concepts of student autonomy.

There was very little use of this strategy before students entered higher levels and smaller, more familiar classes.

6.3.1.2.

Volunteering responses

Some teachers provided opportunities for student audibility in lectures by eliciting responses to questions. Volunteering an answer was subject to the same risks as asking questions, as Saul’s observation of the Korean student revealed (5.6.1.1). There was a point of tension between the imagined self and the personal resources one could actually draw on in a real situation. There was often a desire to take up this opportunity but inhibition prevented it. DX described a lecturer who wanted to offer a voice to international students by asking them regularly about practices in their country, but, “not brave enough,” she regretfully kept silence. She noted that this kind of information-seeking question was different in kind from the tutorial questions common in China, where “maybe asking, just teacher skill, not really to want to know what is your answer. I think teacher doesn’t care about what I’m thinking.”

6.3.1.3.

Coerced responses

Another strategy that teachers used to engender class contribution was actually nominating who should respond. Being coerced to address the class could result in fear and helpless muteness, or in a sense of legitimacy in contributing to the class. Students who were too shy to volunteer a contribution could be quite pleased to be forced into a position where they needed to respond, since success could give a strong sense of legitimate membership, as May discovered in her first semester. She was called up to the front to participate in an activity:

The first time I very shy, I just, ‘No, there’s too heaps people, there’s 200, I can’t face, no, don’t watch me!’ Something like that. But now, no, in the last workshop I really enjoy it. I go up there, I say, ‘I’m very confident. I didn’t need to nervous anything.’ (3)

Several of the students suggested that lecturers’ practice in this regard excluded international students in an unwarranted fashion:

The lecturer was very rude to international students. When he asked questions, he asked for some information, he just asked the Kiwi students, he ignored the international students and say something rude. (LH)

However, further probing revealed that they recognised the teacher’s dilemma, that “we want to speak more in the lecture but we are too shy to speak more, but if the teacher just ask you directly, I will feel more shy” (LH). In another course, where she had not done requisite reading in advance, May stopped attending lectures because of the teacher’s habit of asking questions of individual students:

Actually I didn’t been to that course, any more. I just nervous. Next time I said, ‘No, I didn’t prepare this time, no, no, don’t going today, maybe tomorrow.’ But tomorrow I still didn’t finish, so I didn’t been to that course. (5)

However, far from condemning the lecturer, she felt this was a very helpful practice which, had it been implemented from the beginning, would have been a strong motivation to do the reading in advance.

It seemed, then, that the in-class elicitation of responses from Chinese students was fraught with difficulties. Being audible was highly valued but very threatening of face.

6.3.2.

Participating in tutorials and workshops

6.3.2.1.

Discussing with Kiwi peers

In the imagined interactive university of the students’ hopes, tutorials seemed to offer the possibility of a meeting place with their New Zealand peers. In fact, this was a relatively complex discourse to enter. It involved comprehending the content of the course, comprehending the unadjusted language typical of young New Zealanders, and having the confidence to impose reception, which could appear to be contested by Kiwi classmates. In early days this was being navigated alongside the reticence of the local classmates also negotiating identities in the unfamiliar setting. Consequently, it was a

little more limited than the participants had dreamed: “They just talk one sentence, two sentence and then all finish” (Mike 1). It was particularly hard for international students:

In fact, I want to talk about anything, the other things, but I don’t know how to say, so it’s difficult for me, and it’s like I think but I don’t say. (Thomas 1)

By the end of the semester, things had not changed much: “In discuss the Kiwi speak more. We just most of the time listen” (Thomas 3). GZ’s account did not describe a sophisticated exchange of ideas:

I think the main idea I can understand and some general words I can talk, I can say. I think I can understand what they say and they can understand what I say.

Mike found that by virtue of sitting near Chinese students in his classes he could confine classroom discussion to L1.

Nevertheless there was evidence of a developing discourse, initially mostly for those students whose interviews demonstrated more developed oral skills. This produced pride at being able to participate (“and that time I think, ‘Oh, good, I know how to talk to them,’” May 2) and even to outshine (“I find some Kiwi is quite shy, and sometimes I talked a lot but they just keep quiet, so I think that is quite good,” Saul 2). This was a valued part of being-and-doing a university student.

Teacher intervention to encourage mixed groups was appreciated and made a difference. These measures were often absent but were prevalent in one discipline and were happily recalled:

Today is really fun ’cause we just finished tutorial and it’s really friendly group and really special, so just fifteen people sitting on the ground, making a circle, just like kindergarten students, playing game. It’s really fun. So I think after this semester I can make a real Kiwi friend, or maybe not Kiwi, maybe not only Chinese, another country’s friend. (Scott 4)

For all students, smaller higher level classes and increased experience of the university environment led to greater engagement:

As I understand more, I tend to speak more and ask questions, more questions. (KT)

’Cause they already got most of them got 100 and 200 their foundation so they can use the knowledge they already knew to combine with the release their opinion. (Scott 5)

Mike suggested, however, that there were cultural barriers that remained between them:

Sometimes they talk about the topic is talk about the experience, Kiwi’s experience. It’s totally different in my experience. Sometimes I’m still not

understand it. … if I talk about my experience I can feel they have question

mark about it. (5)

For Mike, this provided an opportunity for learning about cultural difference; he was not so sure that local students saw it the same way:

But many they, to be honest, I would say they don’t understand other people. They think this is my home, New Zealand. Yeah. Some Kiwi students. (5)

6.3.2.2.

Consulting the tutor

Interaction with local students was not the only aspect of tutorials that made them a closer match with the imagined university than lectures. It was possible to talk to the tutor while other students were discussing, and this was the only forum in which Scott risked asking questions in his first year:

Because tutorial you got a time to have a talk with the lecturer, and they ask you maybe have you got any question, so I, ‘Yeah, I have,’ so maybe not so long the time, maybe just several minute, but it’s really important for me because those time is all for me, nobody interrupts, just ask the question and why. So it’s quite good. (5)

It was a private public space in which he found legitimate ways of asking without the fear that he might be imposing inappropriately.