ABSTRACT
Cindy and I were both teaching in an intensive English program at a university in the U.S. Students in this program have already been accepted into masters and doctoral programs and are taking an English for Academic Purposes course to prepare for their study in the U.S. Cindy expressed concern that the students in her writing class “haven’t asked many questions. They sort of let me do the talking.” She hypothesized that it might be cultural because some of the students were from East Asia or they came from a different kind of educational system. The class of 11 included Central/South Americans, an Iranian, an Israeli, Japanese, and Chinese. She further elaborated her perceptions, “They sort of expect you to lecture to them, evaluate how they’re doing . . . rather than coming to you with questions.” At her request, I observed a couple of her classes, and later met briefly with the students. We also audiotaped the lessons. On viewing the transcripts of the lesson, we found that all students did in fact instigate questions. However, they did not respond when she asked, “Do you have any questions?”, which she did several times each lesson. In many cases, students actually interrupted the teacher to pose a question, usually for clarification as in the following where she had been explaining the conventions for writing abstracts:
Cindy: . . . (several utterances) I would encourage you to try to stick to the one-page limit, one typewritten page of course, not handwritten and that wouldn’t necessarily
Student: . . . that’s for papers, not for dissertation?
