Techniques to Encourage Quieter Students in the Classroom

In the world of English language teaching, Japanese students have earned a reputation for being quiet in the classroom.Silence is usually golden in Japan: "eloquent, fluent speech is not highly rated ... indeed, it is often distrusted.Tentativeness is preferred to assertiveness, hesitancy to momentum" (Thompson, 2001).For a language teacher attempting to teach speaking, this cultural bias can seem challenging and difficult to overcome.As Thompson (2001) states, "The Japanese tend not to air their private opinions in public, which means that 'What do you think of ?' topics of discussion can be full of long and painful silences."However, it is not only the value given to reticence that can hamper a speaking lesson.Japanese schools rarely demonstrate student-centred teaching; instead, language lessons tend to be "teacher-dominated" whereby teachers emphasise "the 'correct' answer, learning of grammar rules and item-by-item (rather than contextualized) vocabulary" (Thompson, 2001) -a style of teaching that arguably discourages students speaking out spontaneously in lessons.It is acknowledged that there is "tension associated in Japan with language learning " (Thompson, 2001) and indeed, for Japanese students, making a mistake can have significant cultural consequences: "The Japanese do not care to be 'put on the spot' in public; getting it wrong can be a cause of real shame, especially in front of classmates who are younger or socially inferior (in the Japanese sense)" (Thompson, 2001).This fear of public embarrassment against a background of oral reticence can imply that Japanese students will struggle in discussion based lessons, especially those conducted in a second language.However, while this proved true for me at first, in time this supposition was pleasantly contradicted.When I began teaching at Rikkyo University in 2010, I already had considerable experience teaching Japanese students, but I was still initially startled by my students' silence in the classroom.While I began my teaching career in Japan in 2003, working at ECC and then at Waseda University on the Tutorial English program, I had not taught monolingual Japanese classes for three-and-a-half years, having worked in the UK at Leicester University.My classes in the UK were usually comprised of a range of nationalities, including Saudi, Chinese and Europe.Having become accustomed to using techniques such as eliciting ideas and answers from the group, asking students to choose their own partner and requesting volunteers for activities, it took time to adjust to more reticent speakers again.As McClure (2001) notes: "Asian students are accustomed to sitting attentively and following the teacher's instructions, but when questions are directed at them they are reluctant to reply in case their answer should be wrong".Therefore, I had to learn and re-learn how to construct a classroom environment that would dissolve some of these tendencies and encourage quieter students to take part.The techniques I found most valuable are explained below. SELF-REFLECTIONPrompting students to reflect on their own performance in activities and discussion, rather than the teacher being the only source of feedback, resulted in a noticeable increase in confidence and awareness in students, and subsequently, more willingness to speak in lessons.I also observed that by listening to other students being honest about their use and non-use of function phrases