Introduction

Abstract

This book explores the silent behaviour of learners studying English within Japanese university second language (L2) classrooms. The verbal unresponsiveness of undergraduates in this setting has been alluded to in a number of past works (e.g. Anderson, 1993; Korst, 1997) and there is much anecdotal evidence of Japanese students’ propensity towards silence, and yet it seems strange that no major empirical research has been conducted positioning silence at the heart of its investigation whilst using Japanese tertiary education as its context. Why could this be? Perhaps it is because silence is a somewhat esoteric phenomenon that tends to exist on the edge of our consciousness. This lack of awareness, coupled to a relative scarcity of relevant literature dealing with the subject (when compared to spoken aspects of L2 learner discourse), means that silence simply does not seem to be on most educational researchers’ radar. This in itself is odd because it is an issue that affects everybody who teaches; whether silencing the boisterous or encouraging the silent to contribute — both are part of educators’ daily classroom realities. A further difficulty which might help to explain the lack of empirical studies in this area is that investigating silence presents a number of methodological challenges and interpretive conundrums that are not easily resolved.