The University of Queensland

St Lucia, Qld 4072

TEL: 07-3365-6810

FAX: 07-3365-6811

k.kato@mailbox.uq.edu.au

For NESB teachers who received their education overseas, adapting to local school culture is a major task, and their quest for constructing their "identify as a teacher" involves cross-cultural issues. This paper examines the nature of classroom communication difficulties experienced by LOTE teachers of non-English speaking background (NESB), specifically the Japanese native-speakers. The overall aim of this research to identify areas of classroom communication strategies that may be included in their training programs. Through interviews with teachers, teacher trainees and teacher educators, the main concern of these teachers was identified to be the language used for classroom management. Therefore, the classroom observation gave focus on the teachers' use of directives.

Eight female primary Japanese language teachers were involved in this study. Four of them are Japanese native-speaker teachers (JNS teachers) and the other four are English native-speaker teachers (ENS teachers). The teachers were interviewed and their Year 7 classes were observed. The analysis of the teachers' speech has revealed some noticeable differences in the tendencies of communication styles between the two groups. These differences may be related to the teachers' own schooling experiences as well as their proficiency in English. Other influential factors such as support from other teaching staff are also identified.

The focus of my research has been the issue of communication in classroom context, specifically teacher-student communication and particularly where there are cross-cultural elements. As an educator working in my second culture using the second language, I am interested to evaluate the effectiveness of my classroom communication. However, once we are in classroom, there is little opportunity to assess how effectively we are communicating with our students.

Teachers who work using their second language in a society foreign to them, particularly one with a different approach to education from their own experiences, take time to assimilate the kind of language that is appropriate for classroom use and the accepted way of interacting with students. Thus initially many of them may appear hesitant and not in control of the classroom situation while they try different language strategies appropriate to the new system. For non-Australian teachers and particularly those who are NESB , there may be some cultural aspects which may hinder their communication with students. As claimed by Levy et al: a class climate contributing to learning can be influenced by the cultural origin of the teacher and students, since the way people communicate and the way they perceive communication is culturally influenced and classroom communication is no exception to this (Levy et al, 1997: 29). Levy et al also claims that teachers may well be unaware of this aspect of communication. It seems therefore essential that teachers have the opportunity to reflect on their practice and assess various assumptions they may bring from their background into the new classroom context.

This interest in teacher-student communication was further developed as difficulties dealing with their students were expressed by a number of JNS teachers and trainees who participated in pre- and in-service programs. In my interview with first-year JNS teachers, comments such as " I just can't handle the kids" "Can't win them verbally once they start to argue" or "I can't express myself well". were frequent. These views may be shared with other ENS teachers or even with more experienced teachers. However, for NESB first-year teachers, the difficulties seemed more intense.

In 1995, the Queensland State Education Department (currently Education Queensland) recruited fifteen JNS teachers from Japan on two year contract to teach Japanese language at various Qld. state schools mostly outside metropolitan areas. According to the Department, the program was unsuccessful and terminated on completion of the first contract.

Such difficulties of JNS teachers tend to be explained, as follows: because these teachers are "not assertive enough in their classroom management" and "their teaching approach does not suit Australian classrooms". Although these claims in a sense confirm the difficulties experienced by the JNS teachers, they seem unreasonable, given the fact that these teachers are relatively new to the country, have limited or no knowledge about Australian schools and students, and also are non-native speaker of English. It seemed that the expectation placed on these teachers were somewhat unreasonable and the support was limited.

Based on above incidents, it seemed necessary to investigate the nature of classroom communication of JNS and ENS teachers and explore what aspect of JNS teachers' communication may be "different" and possibly "ineffective" or "inappropriate" to their target learning group, that is, Australian students. The specific questions posed in this study are to identify aspects of classroom communication JNS teachers tend to lack confidence in and to examine if there are differences in classroom communication between JNS and ENS teachers, and to consider what implications such differences may have to teaching approaches.

In recent years consistent number of JNS have been enrolling in pre-service courses (Postgraduate Diploma of Education course: DipEd). The situation seems similar in other teacher education institutions in other states based on my survey of ten teacher preservice courses.

This survey also showed that these courses offered little or no training designed for NESB trainees or for cross-cultural communication contrary to my expectation that trainings in effective communication is imperative for all teachers, and in particular for language teachers.

This has been identified in ESL field, which is the opposite situation to this study but nonetheless contain the potential cross-cultural conflicts between teacher and students. For example Nelson's study (1998) reported that only 42 % of TESOL masters' degree programs listed in the Directory of Professional Preparation Programs in TESOL in the United States had a component related to intercultural communication. Nelson claims that graduates without training in intercultural communication may see their teaching situation from ethnocentric perspective (ibid: 27), and this is problematic in their increasingly multicultural workplace.

The JNS teacher trainees (trainees hereafter) enrolled in Dip Ed courses can be divided into two types according to their visa status. One is those with permanent residency or citizenship and the other with overseas student visa. In the past no students had temporary resident or working visa.

Residents are those who have migrated to Australia mostly with their family before enrolling in the course. They may have lived in Australia for a number of years already, and may have had local work experience. They naturally seek to find employment in teaching on completion of the course.

The other group are non-residents who have come to Australia specifically to undertake the study. Their reasons to enrol in the course are more diverse than resident group. Some see the study as a possible avenue to stay in Australia, and others wish to use the qualification in other countries. Some decided to come to Australia due to the limited teaching opportunity in Japan due to recession and subsequent closure of many private Japanese language schools. There have been also some female students who were seeking means of becoming independent after their marriage break-up.

The teachers who were examined in this study could belong to either group, but all of them completed tertiary education in Japan and have obtained local teaching qualification through Dip Ed course. Their profile can be summarized as: Japanese native-speakers who are teaching Japanese language at Australian primary or secondary schools. They were educated in Japan up to their tertiary degree, with or without teacher qualification from Japan, and have obtained teacher qualification in Australia. In this study, the focus was on beginning teachers, who were in their first or second year of teaching. This is because the overall aim of this research is to develop some guidelines to assist these teachers to become confident in their classroom communication in their early years of teaching.

There are also assistant and exchange teachers who spend up to two years in Australian schools through a number of governmental and private assistantship programs. These teachers are not included in this research, as they are not expected to conduct lessons independently, although they may well experience situations similar to the JNS teachers of this research.

Currently in Qld, Japanese language is one of the six priority languages . As shown in Table 1, the Japanese language has the largest enrolments both in primary and secondary schools. The objectives stated in the Policy issued in 1991 have been mostly achieved by now.

• By 1994, all students in Years 6 to 8 will have the opportunity to study a LOTE;

• In 1996, Years 5-10 will have access to a LOTE;

• In Year 12, 1.5 to 2.5 hours per week will be allotted for the study of one language; and

• By the year 2000, 20 percent of all Year 12 will be studying a language (Department of Education, Qld, 1991)

Table 1: Number of primary/secondary schools offering LOTE* in Qld (LACU, 1996) *Priority languages except Italian

In Qld, LOTE is now officially compulsory for Years 5 to 8, although actual implementation varies across schools. The 1996 enrolments shown in Tables 2 and 3 are expected to be similar to the current figure except for Year 5, in which LOTE program is being implemented during 1998. It is anticipated that LOTE will be implemented into Years 4 to 10 during Years 2000 to 2003 and currently the Junior Syllabus (Years 4 to 10) is being developed.

Table 2: LOTE enrolments per language: primary schools in Qld (LACU, 1996)

Table 3: LOTE enrolments per language in secondary schools in Qld (LACU, 1996)

Currently the number of JNS teachers is estimated to be around twenty in Qld state system. The number of JNS teachers varied across the states according to the National Profile (Table 4). It was also the case that more JNS teachers were in secondary schools than primary, and more in non-government sectors than in the government sectors (Table 5).

Table 4: Distribution of native speaker teachers of Japanese across states (Source: Mariott et al, 1994: 59-63)

Table 5: Proportion of native speaker teachers across school categories (Source: Mariott et al, 1994: 59-63)

As for pre-service training course at The University of Qld, the number of JNS teachers who enrolled in Japanese methodology course were ten out of 30 in 1996 and 4 out of 19 in 1997 respectively. Their visa status is summarized in Table 6. Since the course is for high school qualification, the students are required to select two teaching areas: the Major: ACS: Area Curriculum Study and the Minor: STS (Second Teaching Subject). Japanese was ACS for all students. Their STS are listed in Table 7.

Table 6: JNS teacher trainees (DipEd program)

Table 7: STS (Second Teaching Subjects) selected by JNS trainees

As a preliminary investigation, I interviewed all JNS trainees in DipEd course and 5 JNS classroom teachers and 5 advisory teachers. JNS trainees had experienced Australian classroom in their teaching practicum. The advisory teachers were familiar with JNS teachers since their main role was to provide in-services and other necessary support for beginning teachers. Based on the information, it seemed the areas of difficulties can be classified as linguistic factors and pedagogical factors, although they are obviously closely related.

• Appropriateness of classroom language

The question of appropriateness applies to not only teacher's speech but also students'. Teachers are concerned with what they should say in what way, but also need to be aware what kind of language is allowed, or more often, not allowed in classroom situations, and how to deal with inappropriate comments made by their students.

• Assertiveness

Questions were often raised in regard with assertiveness versus aggression. It was difficult to be assertive without appearing overly emotional or aggressive, which many JNSs considered to be inappropriate and undesirable in classroom situations. Advisory teachers thought JNSs tended to confuse aggression and assertiveness and often considered assertiveness to be negative.

• Self-expression

Similar to above point, JNSs thought it was necessary to know how to express their emotions in both positive (eg praising) and negative (eg anger, disappointment) ways. Yet, the JNSs often did not have sufficient vocabulary to express a range of emotions in a way that was appropriate to classroom context. This was also observed by the advisory teachers.

• Explaining logically

JNSs often had difficulties explaining reasons, constructing logical argument when their students asked them "why". With older students in particular, it was often difficult for them to verbally "win" the students.

Not having experienced schooling in Australia, it was naturally difficult for the JNSs to grasp the nature of Australian schools, students and classroom culture. Such "culture" includes: teaching approaches, standard of discipline, teacher-student relationship and teacher status. Although curriculum content is obviously another area, it is not included in this study in order to give more focus on the issue of interpersonal communication.

• Teaching approaches

Even though teachers were familiar with communicative methodology, they were initially overwhelmed with the interactiveness of Australian classrooms. JNSs considered imperative to allow student participation in their teaching. At the same time, they considered that Australian students tended to be "immature", for they were expressive and constantly sought positive feedback for their work from the teacher.

• Standard of discipline

In terms of student behaviour, "where to draw a line" was a difficult question for JNSs, now knowing the norm in school and wider social contexts. Students are well known for testing out new teachers, and with JNS teachers it seemed to be more serious.

• Teacher-students relationship and teacher status

One JNS commented that "students don't respect you just because you are teacher. But in Japan, teachers are teachers." JNS generally felt that teachers are generally not respected in Australia. Advisory teachers, on the other hand, thought JNS teachers did not make enough effort to make students respect them. They suggested that being strict with their routine, follow-up what they said, giving positive reinforcement and "maintaining the classroom order as frequently as possible" are some of the strategies suggested by Advisory teachers.

• Credibility as a teacher (positive/non-LOTE)

For JNSs whose STS was non-LOTE, they experienced significant changes in students attitude towards them in their STS lessons. As well as JNSs having less confidence teaching STS, they felt as if they lack credibility to teach the subject, and being NESB was seen to be more negative than when they were teaching Japanese. Another type of student attitudinal change was observed by a French trainee, who was fluent in Japanese. He had significantly more difficulties in his Japanese class than his French class. He thought the students did not "believe" that a French person can teach Japanese. Another trainee who was a Chinese native speaker did not experience such attitude change between her Chinese and Japanese classes.

To investigate Teachers' classroom communication, particularly the language of control, I conducted a series of classroom observation focusing on the teachers' use of directives. The teachers involved in this observation were four JNS and four ENS teachers who were in their first or second year of teaching after graduating from the Dip Ed course. In this case, teachers were all female in their twenties or thirties. Selecting only female teachers was both intentional and unintentional. Initially there was no male teachers available for observation in the area. At the same time, it was considered to be more appropriate to avoid possible variable of gender, and also because female teachers represent the majority in Japanese language teaching.

The classes observed was primarily Year 7. This was because Years 7 and 8 were identified to be most problematic by the teachers; a considerable number of classes were available for observation since LOTE was compulsory; classes tend to be large and therefore require teacher control; and the majority of new position were in primary schools as the positions in secondary schools in metropolitan areas have been filled.

I was interested in analysing directives for their function, structural variations and relative power expressed.

1. Function

According to Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), on a functional level directives request a non-linguistic response resulting in a physical action, usually in the form of some acknowledgment that one is listening, reading, writing or moving. They divided directives into: requests, order and threats. In classroom situations, directives are used to get students to engage in some activities or organize them in preparation for activities. Students may be required to produce language exponent, but this is different from verbal responce to the directives themselves. Explanation on subject matters therefore are not regarded as directives in this study.

2. Structural variations

Structural variations was another aspect to examine, since some JNS expressed that they were not aware that "I'd like you to" can be used as a directive in some situations in place of imperatives, which is the most common form of directives. Therefore, it is useful for JNS to understand that directives may be expressed as a form of imperative, interrogative or declarative. Imperatives are most frequently used as classroom directives, since they are relatively explicit and they tend to occur as realizations of directives in address to subordinates (Holmes, 1983).

3. Relative power (Mitigation)

Different nature and degree of power is expressed by structurally different forms of directives. To be able to use different structures, the expressed relative power needs to be understood as well as their functions to be able to choose appropriate forms of directives. As Leech suggests, relative power, relative social distance and relative cost of the proposed interaction interact in determining the appropriate choice of directive-type in any interaction (Leech, 1977: in Holmes, 1984: 96). For example, in the examples below, the most power is expressed by 1, and the least by 6 According to Leech (ibid).

1. Personal need/desire statements eg I want some silence

2. Imperatives Settle down.

3. Imbeded imperatives You should stop talking.

4. Permission directives You may leave now.

5. Question directives Can you be quiet?

6. Hints Silence would be nice.

Mitigation, or modification of power seen in above examples may play an important role in making directives effective. Mitigation can be defined as: a modification of a speech act, the reduction of certain unwelcome effects which a speech act has on the hearer (Fraser, 1980: 341).

In case of teacher's classroom communication, teachers often engage in face threatening acts, in the sense that constrain students' freedom and criticize their behaviour and their work, often in public. The effects of such acts may be 'softened' by various mitigation strategies (Cazden, 1988: 62). Teachers may use mitigation in order to avoid negative response from students or loosing student's face. Mitigation can be realized by a variety of strategies (Bradac & Ng, 1993), including:

• Indirect performance of speech acts (eg Sentences with Will you; Would you mind are more indirect than performative structure: Austin, 1962)

• Use of justification

I cannot hear what John is saying; if everyone talks at the same time.

• Adjustment of immediacy or distance (shift in deontic source)

• Use of various linguistic devices

Disclaimer I hate to say this but; if you wouldn't mind,

Parenthetical verbs I guess, I assume, I think

Tag questions Finish this first, will you?

Modifier please, thank you

For the purpose of analysis, a taxonomy of directives was necessary. To establish a model that suits my study, I have combined structural variation and various mitigated forms based on Holms's model (1983) which is based on structural variation. Function was analysed separately. The taxonomy was then organized as a table, which then was divided into two columns, one for JNS and the other for ENS teachers. Then two data was compared.

Some noticeable differences in the use of directives were observed between the two groups. Firstly, in terms of structural variations, although all three forms (imperatives, interrogatives, declaratives) were used by both groups, there were much less variety in JNSs' directives. At the same time, JNSs tended to used more imperatives, particularly negative imperatives ("Don't"), and also declaratives, including "You will.." "You don't.." which were never used by ENSs. ENSs, on the other hand, tended to use more interrogatives.

As for mitigation strategies, ENSs used more of the following strategies:

1) Indirect performance of speech acts, using variety of modals

2) Use of justification (eg because, ..so that.., the purpose of this activity is...)

3) Use of various linguistic devices

There was only one example of "adjustment of immediacy or distance" which used by a JNS.

In terms of functions, the following types of directives were used much more frequently by ENSs than JNSs.

• Marking activity boundaries

Various devices were used to draw student attention at the beginning of lesson or in between activities, marking a clear boundaries between each segments of lessons. This was noticeably lacking in JNSs' speech.

egwhat we're going to do today is..

• Requesting for reasons/clarification

egWhy aren't you working?

• Giving choices

egIt's up to you. Do you want to move or stay as a group?

• Reminding class rules

eg What was our rule? Use our rules.

• Expressions of personal feelings

eg I'm so disappointed.

• Encouraging participation (including more use of we rather than you)

eg Let's help him out..

• Encouraging use of strategies

egWhat do you think it might be...

• Positive and negative expressions

Difference was observed in the use of positive and negative expressions.

ENSs tended to use positive rather than negative expressions such as Sit up nicely rather than Don't rock your chair. More frequent and varieties of positive feedback were also given by ENSs, including good girl/boy, excellent, well-done, good job. On the other hand, the positive feedback offered by the JNSs were limited to: good, excellent, well done and were also far less frequent.

Voice quality of ENSs were often stern, low, never raising sentence ending even with interrogatives. On the other hand, JNSs often spoke with rising tone, and in some cases in a high pitch voice, particularly when they spoke in Japanese.

By interpreting the above differences in terms of teaching approach, it seems that some of the elements which affect he effectiveness of teacher instructions may include:

1. Preparing students for specific instructions using markers such as: What we're going to do today is..;What I'd like you to do next is..or Before we move on.. to clearly mark the beginning and end of an activity before the actual instructions are given.

This kind of phrases or markers are defined by Dorr-Bremme as: types of contexualization cues functioning in marking, or signalling context boundaries (Dorr-Bremme, 1990: 388), which are routinely enacted by one participant as the context changes. The indication is signalled through various conventionalized verbal and non-verbal means. The cues are said to be significant in lesson management, since the effectiveness of teacher talk in terms of lesson management may depend on not only the content of the speech but also the organization of discourse marked by various markers (ibid).

In JNS teachers' speech, the absence of such markers were noticeable. In such cases, the boundaries between activities were often unclear and sometimes the lesson moved on leaving students still engaged in the previous activity or chatting amongst them. These moments were also when some students lost attention, misbehaved or became confused. On the other hand, when the activities were marked by clear boundary markers, teachers had time to recollect students' attention, wait for them to become quiet, and prepare them for the next set of instructions. Frequent use of such marker also illustrated that there were frequent changes in classroom activities.

2. Expecting students responsibility & participation

ENS teachers tended to expect students to make their own decisions and be responsible accordingly, not only for their behaviour but also for their learning. Class rules were often used as one of the strategy for students to self-regulate their behaviour. Expectation for student to be responsible seemed essential to maintain interactive nature of classes where more teacher-students and student-student interaction occurred more frequently than in lecturer-style lessons. At the same time, ENS teachers were seen to encourage students to participate and contribute to the class.

Teachers' expectation and respect for individual responsibility, participation and contribution seem to the core of approaches used by ENS teachers, which are consistent with fundamental features of an interactive and learner-centred approach encouraged in Australian classrooms (Scarino et al, 1988).

ENS teachers tended to use more indirect forms of directives compared to JNS teachers. This is possibly largely related to the degrees of proficiency levels in English. At the same time, it may indicate the differences in the definition of teacher role understood by JNS and ENS teachers. As pointed out by one of the trainees, "teachers are teachers in Japan" Australian teachers are required to play more "facilitative" rather than "authoritative" role, resulting in the linguistic differences.

There are also a number of other factors that seem to influence classroom performance of LOTE teachers directly or indirectly. These factors are likely to affect all teachers, but probably more significantly JNS teachers.

Firstly, the amount of support from other staff members, school & community vary across schools. Schools which actively promotes LOTE or specifically Japanese through activities such as exchange, cultural day, competitions are naturally more supportive of teachers. This is often reflected in cultural displays in the reception areas, which helps to create welcoming atmosphere. On the other hand, some schools have clearly negative attitude towards LOTE, not necessarily Japanese, which may be a result of conflict in resource allocation or lack of understanding. At one of the schools observed in this study, staff unanimously agreed that LOTE should not be implemented any further. Such decision also reflected the attitude of the local community. The Japanese language teacher at this school said that the students at this school often said LOTE was not important, which naturally made teaching more difficult.

Since this study was carried out at primary schools, the classroom teachers' behaviour was also influential. LOTE is taught during non-contact hour of classroom teachers, and therefore teachers are not required to stay in the classrooms. During the observation most of the teachers stayed at their desk and did work, occasionally reprimanding bad behaviour of students when necessary. Some teachers left the room for the entire duration of the lesson. A few teachers actively participated in the lesson. Again, the degree of support from the classroom teachers were reflected in the displays in the room. Rooms with Japanese posters, kana charts and student works created encouraging environment. On the other hand, one classroom teacher did not allow any display space, offering only a very limited space on the white board to write on. Such attitude naturally influenced students.

Second factor was LOTE teachers' isolation from other members of the teaching staff. Since primary LOTE teachers normally teach at two or three schools if they worked full-time. One of the schools is the base school where the teacher has a desk. At the other schools, however, teachers do not have any particular work space. The teachers in this study most often worked in staff common area during their spare hour. Although the schools taught by one teacher were closely located (within 10-minute drive), travelling from school to school in between lessons was taxing and also reduced the opportunity for the teachers to speak with other members of the staff. Because of this, most of the teachers expressed some sense of isolation, and in case of JNS teachers, they may be mistaken as a guest teacher by other staff.

Third factor only applies to non-resident JNS teachers. For those who have come on a student visa, obtaining a resident visa is not easy. In the Qld state system, registered JNS teachers may be sponsored for the initial two years by the state education department. Although this may be extended or teachers may be able to apply for a permanent residency, living with a degree of uncertainly is difficult. This was also expressed by the trainees whose future employment was uncertain during their study, which made the situation extremely stressful.

These are some of the factors that are specific to LOTE teachers, and need to be considered when assessing their performance.

Teachers naturally develop the approach appropriate to their classroom. These JNS teachers would certainly develop their English and methodology to better control their students over the years. However, support is needed in the very early years of teaching and suggestions for language and methodology would be valuable.

There is no doubt that NS teachers are valuable asset for LOTE and education and their contribution is significant. I also believe these teachers, as NESB, play an important role for the culturally diverse classroom to whom they can present a positive role model. At the same time, there are a number of factors which should be taken into consideration in facilitating these teachers' development as seen in this paper, and as Nicholas (1993) suggests: transferring teachers directly from a mainstream first language teaching responsibility overseas to a second language teaching responsibility in Australia is generally inappropriate (Nicholas et al, 1993: 67). If these teachers', or any teacher's performance is hindered in any way, it would be quite damaging not only for themselves but to the school, the subject and most importantly to the students.

It seems only natural to expect that these teachers require more support than locally educated teachers, since: the qualities sought after for 'good teacher' are likely to be culturally-specific and also to change as the educational philosophy and policy evolve. Such change can make it especially difficult for an 'outsider', such as an overseas- trained teacher, to be aware of critical dimensions of the 'good teacher' role. Yet, work in the school system is predicated very extensive on an ability to work within this specific cultural framework (Inglis & Philps, 1995: 43).

There is no reason to regard JNS teachers as incompetent or inappropriate for their work environment. I would like to emphasise the importance of culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995) which applies to all of us who is working with culturally diverse learning groups.

The differences observed here should not be used in a prescriptive way, since there is no right or wrong and every classroom situation is different. However, understanding some aspect of classroom communication will certainly empower these teachers, who need to gain confidence in operating in their second language and second culture from the outset of their career and in a shortest possible time.

More firm commitment to maximise the contribution of native speaker or NESB LOTE teachers is needed in teacher education. For these teachers, more guidelines may be provided for classroom observation for practicum, case scenario and samples of typical teacher talks, and effective communication in English in general. Such training in commutation, and especially cross-cultural communication should in fact benefit any language teachers regardless of their field and background since in our workplace a multicultural population is the norm and teachers can no longer assume that one way of teaching/learning is appropriate for all language learning situations (Nelson, 1998: 28).

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