MAdissertation

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Intercultural factors which act as a barrier to
communicative language teaching:
A study of Japanese students and the
wider implications for multilingual classes
Mike Furber
mike_furber@hotmail.com

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CONTENTS
I. ABSTRACT
II. INTRODUCTION
III. METHODS OF RESEARCH
A. Methods
B. Why Japanese students?
C. Constraints on the research
IV. BACKGROUND LITERATURE
A. The current orthodoxy of language teaching methodology
B. Intercultural Communication
C. Pragmatics
D. Learner Styles
V. RESEARCH FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS OF DATA
A. Questionnaires
B. Focus Groups and Interviews
 Teaching Methodology
 Intercultural Communication
C. Recorded classroom activity data
 Organisation of discourse- Inductive/Deductive styles
 Individualist/Collectivist societies, turn-taking and the management of conflict
VI. CONCLUSIONS

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I. ABSTRACT
This dissertation contains research into the intercultural factors that act as a
barrier to the prevalent methods of language teaching, focussing on Japanese
students in a British language school as a comparison group with a Non-
Japanese group and making wider inferences for multicultural classes.
Background is given to the tenets, practices and historical development of the
language teaching method known as 'Communicative language teaching', which
is widely accepted as the most prevalent method of second language teaching.
My hypothesis is that many classroom activities that are characterised as
'Communicative' do not fully match the aims of teachers and the expectations of
students, in terms of developing what is known as 'Communicative competence',
as the method does not take into account the differing communicative styles of
students in multicultural classes. Drawing on theories of intercultural
pragmatics and communication style frameworks, the paper will attempt to
prove through questionnaires, focus groups/interviews and classroom
observation whether many language teaching activities broadly described as
'communicative' have the outcomes desired by teachers and students. The paper
will also refer to the influence of different learning styles and strategies on
intercultural factors, essentially analysing why some students are able to
overcome their cultural boundaries in speaking activities and others are not. I
expect the research to demonstrate that a heightened awareness of different
styles of intercultural communication would benefit both teachers and students
working in the ELT sector. The research was carried out in Bell Language
school Cambridge (UK) throughout 2006.

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II. INTRODUCTION
There has been a lot of research and writing on the subject of Intercultural communication, but
much less into the learner's culture as a barrier to some of the prevalent methods and approaches
currently used in language teaching. Many of the tenets of Communicative language teaching
have been accused by various sources of almost a form of cultural imperialism. As Richards and
Rodgers (2001:Pg 248) describe it, the “ assumptions and practices implicit in CLT are viewed as
'correct', whereas those of the target culture are seen in need of replacement”. When language
schools in the UK and other countries are teaching English to huge numbers of students from all
around the world, it is worth taking into account that as Samovar and Porter (1991:Pg 21) write “In
the study of human interaction, it is important to look at cultural values, but in the study of
intercultural communication it is crucial”. It is the argument of this research that the 'crucial'
nature of cultural communication style has been neglected in the development of the teaching
method known as Communicative Language Teaching. One specific aim of this research is to
identify the differences in communicative style from the questionnaires, interviews and recorded
interactions, and the extent to which they prevent the aims of CLT lessons being met and are the
cause of ineffective communication. Data collected should support the notion that this mismatch
between cultural communication styles acts as a barrier to the methods and procedures that
characterise CLT.
Any study on the subject of 'culture' should first attempt to define what we mean by this word and
exactly what we are attempting to measure. Hofstede (1980) maintains that 'Values' form the core
of any given culture, particularly in distinguishing between 'Collectivist' and 'Individualist'
societies- defined further in the background literature. This definition of culture is given by
Goodenough and is cited by Fitzgerald (2003: Pg 21), “Whatever it is one has to know, or profess
to believe, in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members in every role that they accept
for one of themselves”. Goodenough's definitions of culture stress the individuality of beliefs and
attitudes of people within a culture, but that the variation is contained within limits distinct from
other cultures. Any research into cultural issues must be wary of the stereotyping of individuals
or ascribing a simple causal relationship between culture and the actions or speech of an
individual. In this study, an attempt will be made to identify trends and also to account for
individual differences using a variety of methods of research and areas of background literature
including intercultural communication, pragmatics, teaching methodology and learning styles.

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Another aim of this research is to identify how far these cultural differences can be accommodated
within the specific procedures of CLT teaching. It is worth noting that the approaches and
teaching methods of CLT are based on western ideas and philosophies of what constitutes good
learning, specifically philosophies originating from the social changes that took place in western
societies in the 1960's and from writers such as Noam Chomsky, whose views on communiative
language teaching are cited in the background literature section. For example, CLT's starting point
is that activities involve students in 'real communication'. However, if we take a common CLT
lesson aim or objective, such as 'fluency', it is unclear whether this is an objective which would be
employed in 'real communication' in every society. Some societies value silence and slow,
deliberate speech, while others value rapid speech. Moreover, there is evidence that CLT is in
fundamental conflict with the culture of learning in various societies, notably Chinese, in respect
of factors such as the philosophical assumptions about the nature of learning and teaching,
perceptions of the respective responsibilities and roles of students and teachers. Questionnaire
results, interviews and classroom observation were expected to confirm that these cultural
differences manifest themselves in classroom behaviours that do not conform to the aims of CLT
methods and procedures. The tendency of group participants to make negative character
assessments on others who use different communication styles and have different values will be
discussed in the literature on 'Intercultural communication', and the recorded classroom activities
and other data analysed for evidence of this. The data is expected to show that many activities
break down because they believe that their classmates are guilty of some negative character trait
when in fact they are just displaying the characteristics of a specific cultural communication style.
Negative character assessment has the potential consequence that activities in multicultural CLT
classrooms designed to promote real communication in practice produce ineffective
communication. The research on the negative effects of stress on language learning, for example
Krashen's 'Affective filter' (1983), could be complicated if multicultural language classrooms are
themselves found to constitute a stressful situation.
The dominant methodologies and approaches in language teaching have changed considerably in
the last 40 years, from a focus on learning 'structure' or grammar through repetitive drills (although
as we shall see in the background literature and research data these methods live on) to the CLT
idea of 'communicative competence' that hopefully takes into account a student's motivation for
speaking and ability to control language for his own purposes. It is the argument of this paper that
any notions of 'real communication' cannot be separated from their social and psychological

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context, which includes the culture and communication style of the learner. The study of
pragmatics is important in this, as it deals with the relationship between the form or grammar of
what is said, speaker intention and the effect or 'force' of what is said on the listener. Possible
speaker intention will be analysed from the transcripts of the recorded speaking activities and
whether they have the desired effect on the listener. This information can then be related to the
relevant issues surrounding cultural communication style.
The purpose of this research is not to dismiss the concept of 'Communicative Competence', but to
analyse the intercultural factors which could complicate its acquisition. For the purposes of this
research, what I am attempting to measure is the effect not of 'culture', but of the effect of different
cultural communication styles as outlined in the frameworks given in the background literature
section on a specific teaching method (which will also be defined in the background literature).
The research will try to identify trends from a variety of sources and the variables that affect them,
encouraging students to reflect on the issues raised in the background literature and attempting to
measure this against their actual behaviour in recorded classroom activities. From the different
methods of collecting data, recurring themes and issues can be identified and inferences made.

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III. METHODS OF RESEARCH
A. Methods
The background to this research is a proposed clash between a methodology of second language
teaching and various cultural communication styles. A problem with research of this type is that
measuring 'culture' is often subjective and intangible, as Thanasoulas (2001:Pg 2) states:
“since the wider context of language, that is, society and culture, has been reduced to a variable
elusive of any definition, it stands to reason that the term communicative competence should
become nothing more than an empty and meretricious word, resorted to if for no other reason than
to make an educational point”. This 'elusive' nature of culture as a variable would suggest that it
is best measured qualitatively, with patterns emerging and analysis made from a variety of sources.
The research data that is presented will be a combination of qualitative and quantitative research.
Qualitative research makes up the majority of the data in the form of student comments from the
questionnaire's more open questions, student interviews and transcriptions of recorded classroom
activities. However, there are questions in the questionnaire that will provide statistical evidence
in support of the given hypothesis.
The starting point for this research was to develop a questionnaire that would identify that there
were issues with one nationality of students that caused them to have problems in mixed culture
language school classrooms, when compared with a mixed culture group also subject to the same
questionnaire. This was to establish whether the concerns, reactions to CLT procedures and
language learning objectives could be identified as distinct in one nationality group. If this
distinction could be identified then this could be interpreted as an issue and a barrier to the success
of the method of language teaching. With this in mind, I conducted a series of informal interviews
with Japanese students at Bell language school to try to draw out any recurring issues in relation to
language schools and the methods of teaching used in them for this group. I did this by asking
questions about their first impressions of the lessons in the UK, the teachers, any comparisons with
English lessons in their country (either positive or negative), their own learning style and concerns
about language learning, any cultural issues that surprised them with other students or anything
else that arose. What arose was a preoccupation with activities that involved speaking in the
classroom and the giving of opinion, which are both integral features of CLT lessons. The
resultant questionnaire was produced to measure how far the recurring themes of these interviews
were generalisable for Japanese students as opposed to non-Japanese students. These recurring

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themes and characteristics were then related to the background reading on intercultural
communication and language teaching methodology, and a questionnaire was produced which was
then trialled at Bell language school Cambridge in April and May 2006. Subsequent modifications
were then made to questions that produced ambiguous or negligible data, followed by a further
trial and a final running of the questionnaire. Included in the questionnaire are a number of
statements which I believe represent some of the reasons for the 'barrier' mentioned in the
hypothesis, in relation to Japanese students. For example, 'I don't like to speak until I am sure I am
correct', 'It is very rude to interrupt the teacher', 'It is very rude to interrupt another student', 'My
grammar is better than my speaking'. Students can agree or disagree with these statements and a
comparison made between Japanese and Non-Japanese groups to ascertain if these attitudes are
indeed more prevalent in the Japanese group. The questionnaire also includes a series of more
open questions, giving students the opportunity to describe any cultural characteristics they have
that make it difficult to study English in another country, how English teachers could help them
more, and any favourable/unfavourable comparisons they could make with language teaching in
their own country. Any dominant or recurring issues will be collated in the findings section.
Although such responses are invariably subjective, I expect the findings of the trial questionnaire
relating to a reluctance to give opinion and disagree explicitly with classmates to be replicated in
the final questionnaire. A potential problem with this type of research is described by Mackey and
Gass:- “One concern is that responses may be inaccurate or incomplete because of the difficulty in
describing learner-internal phenomena such as perceptions and attitudes” (2005, Pg 96)
To counteract this inherent subjectivity of students' responses to questionnaires, a series of
interviews and a focus group were held and students were given the opportunity to compare and
expand on their questionnaire answers. This was done with the objective of allowing students'
subjective opinions to be challenged and some sort of concensus reached. Interview subjects were
chosen on the basis of having some sort of intercultural perspective, and included a Japanese
woman who worked for a British company, 2 Japanese secondary school teachers on a training
course in the UK and a British/Japanese couple who had lived and worked in both cultures. These
individuals had extensive experience of both cultures and consequently an authoritative
perspective on the type of cultural barriers being discussed in the hypothesis of this research. The
focus group was made up of Japanese language school students from Bell school Cambridge, so
that reactions to CLT lessons in language schools could be compared and expanded upon. The
interview data was analysed for how closely it matched expected cultural behaviour as outlined in

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the background literature section and for how far it supported the findings of the questionnaire data
and consequently the hypothesis.
Whenever possible I tried not to be part of the interviews and focus groups by encouraging
students to compare their questionnaire answers and expand on their answers; this was to avoid
directing the conversation or producing what Mackey and Gass (2005:Pg 174) describe as the
“Halo effect”, which is the danger that interviewees pick up cues from the researcher relating to
what they think the researcher wants to hear. However, there were times when students needed
prompting to speak and others when I felt that the topics that arose merited further questioning.
Finally, the inferences made from interviews/focus groups and questionnaires will be matched
against analysis of recorded classroom activities to gauge whether the data collected confirms the
hypothesis and inferences made in the analysis of questionnaires and interviews/focus groups. Five
groups of students were given the speaking activity 'Who gets the heart?'. This activity is usually
used to develop communicative competence, fluency and discourse management skills in English
language classrooms- students have to decide which terminally ill patient gets a donor heart given
a range of profiles. I recorded these interactions to analyse evidence of different cultural
communication styles and how they affected whether the teaching aims of the activity were met
effectively, in support of the hypothesis given in the abstract and in light of previous data from
questionnaires and interviews. The research is cyclical in nature, in that an attempt is made to
identify and analyse themes and evidence of communication breakdown that is attributable to
cultural communication style. I expect the data to show further evidence of an identifiable issue
concerning many Japanese students and their unease during speaking activities that involve
contentious discussion, in line with the background literature on communication style. The groups
were chosen to include a mix of cultures and at least one Japanese or south-east Asian student in
four of the groups. In another, no Japanese or other south-east Asian student was included to make
a comparison group to see if the nature of the discussion was different. There was no teacher or
native English speaker involved in the discussion, and one student was chosen to read out
instructions for the activity. As far as possible I was not involved in any of the interactions
recorded, although I was present in the room, students read the instructions for the task and
organised its implementation. This was to minimise the effect of what Labov (1972) calls the
“Observer's Paradox”; that the observer's presence can influence the linguistic behaviour of the

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participants. Activities were recorded and the relevant sections to this research transcribed and
organised under the heading of the area of background literature they most closely related to.
The task selected for the recorded classroom observation was chosen to draw out issues of cultural
communication styles; such as cultural variations in turn-taking, managing conflict, cultural
values, rhetorical strategies and discourse organisation. 'Who gets the heart?' is a discussion
activity available from a number of sources, but I used the one from 'The non-stop discussion
workbook' (1981). A basic ranking/decision making activity of a type common to CLT
classrooms, this activity is also used by Fitzgerald (2003) in her study of similar cultural issues
among immigrants to Australia. In line with the CLT philosophy of language 'learning-by-using',
the Teacher's notes section of the Non-stop Discussion Workbook includes the quote that “The
purpose of this workbook is to generate discussions in which the students do almost all the talking”
(1981: Pg 7). In the activity recorded, four students are given the task of deciding as a team which
of 6 critically ill patients should receive the donor heart available from the given information,
which includes such details as the age, job and marital status of the patients. Four out of the five
groups recorded included at least one Japanese student. This was to compare not only the
behaviour of Japanese students within groups, but also to see if not having a Japanese student
changed the nature of the discussion. This is in line with the notion of using control or comparison
groups to measure the hypothesis against. After the activity I also recorded some reflections by
students on what had happened to try to ascertain how much of their behaviour had been culture
specific, whether they saw it as such and their reactions to the culture specific cultural
communication styles of others as defined in the background literature.
I conducted the three different methods of data collection to produce the effect of triangulation, or
using multiple, independent methods of obtaining data to arrive at the same research findings. I
expect the questionnaires, interviews/focus group and observations all to produce evidence that
students' cultural communication styles produce negative effects unaccounted for in the CLT
methodology as defined in the background literature. As qualitative research has the drawback of
being by nature more subjective than quantitative data, as Mackey and Gass (2005: Pg 180)
describe it “based on the assumption of multiple, constructed realities”, it becomes necessary to
demonstrate that the evidence for a cultural barrier to CLT can be replicated in a number of
different situations.

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B. Why Japanese students?
I chose to focus on Japanese students as a comparison group to make wider inferences about
multicultural/multilingual language classes because from my reading, experience and much
anecdotal evidence from other teachers, they present perhaps the most obvious mismatch with so
called Communicative Language Teaching as I will attempt to define it in the background
literature section. This could be for a variety of reasons, firstly because the Japanese have such
strong relationships between culture and language, between public and private behaviour, and
between context and the level of deference shown. As Thomas puts it (1995:Pg 151) “in languages
such as Japanese and Korean however, many parts of speech (nouns and adjectives as well as verbs
and pronouns) can be 'unmarked' or 'marked' for deference or even super-deference”. I expect
these cultural communication styles to be evident in the research data produced in questionnaires,
interviews/focus group and classroom observation. As the philosophical and intellectual roots of
CLT lie in the social changes of western societies in the 1960s, away from concepts of deference
and towards the egalitarianism of 'teacher as facilitator'; laying out the classroom in a 'horseshoe',
calling the teacher by first name, the students doing as much talking (if not more) than the teacher,
we might perceive an obvious mismatch. CLT's focus on 'real communication' and 'communicative
competence' often means the discussion of contentious issues, as evidenced by the titles and topics
used in many popular CLT speaking resources such as 'Taboos and Issues', 'Challenge To Think',
'Ideas and Issues' and 'Discussions A-Z'. As Fitzgerald (2003, pg 136) writes: “much of the
literature in these Asian cultures describes their dislike of open, public debate and disagreement
and their preference for silence in the kind of discussions in meetings, seminars and classrooms
that are typical in English speaking societies”. Jandt (2001, Pg 155) also tells us of the high value
placed on silence by the Japanese, and that a person of few words is considered “thoughtful,
trustworthy and respectable”. Also worth mentioning is the importance placed on group harmony
by the Japanese. If a teacher's aim is to develop 'communicative competence' (Hymes, 1972)
through this type of discussion, then both teacher and student can feel bewildered, confused and
frustrated by what can transpire. Through the questionnaires and focus groups/interviews for my
research I wanted to encourage reflection and analysis of these issues that reached beyond the
stereotypes, for instance the Japanese as silent or inscrutable, to explore how the students'
individual attitudes could serve to overcome or exacerbate cultural differences, and also how the
expected cultural behaviour produced was a barrier to the CLT method.

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Initial interviews I carried out with Japanese students while developing the idea for this research
stressed the highly disciplined, regimented nature of their secondary school education, and the
culture shock many young learners experience on arrival in a CLT classroom in a foreign country.
Mari, a Japanese student in her early twenties summed it up thus:- “I thought 'What's this?', people
sitting around in groups chatting...very strange”. Hendry (2003, Pg 94) describes the stereotype of
a Japanese classroom, “the overwhelming image of high school classes is one of boredom- of
children accumulating facts but having little opportunity to discuss them, of possibly resenting the
authority of teachers but learning not to challenge it”. Part of the questionnaire for both Japanese
and Non-Japanese subjects of my research attempts to ascertain how far the tenets and procedures
of CLT have been adopted internationally, and the consequences of this for classroom culture and
levels of students' language skills also acting as a barrier to the given method of teaching.
C. Constraints on the research.
As my research was confined to the students of one independent language school in the UK, the
students tended to fit a homogenous profile in terms of age, socio-economic group and
nationalities included in the research. The cultural experience and communicative style observed
could have produced different data with, for example, an older, less well-travelled group with
lower levels of educational achievement.
I was also constrained by factors such as the number of Japanese students present at the school and
the fact that I was working full-time as a teacher there while carrying out the research.
As has been mentioned, the subjectivity and negligibility of 'culture' as a variable sometimes
makes it unclear whether student behaviour or viewpoint is attributable to culture or an individual
response. To counteract this, the three different types of research were employed produce the
previously mentioned 'triangulation' effect and identify recurring themes from a variety of sources.

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IV. BACKGROUND LITERATURE
A. The current orthodoxy of language teaching methodology
This research has the hypothesis that intercultural factors act as a barrier to the prevalent methods
of language teaching. Although I am attempting to measure how effective current methods of
language teaching are for students from different cultures, it is perhaps difficult to define what
those methods are in practice. Richards and Rodgers finish their book 'Approaches and methods
in language teaching' (Richards and Rodgers 2001, p.244) with a chapter on what they describe as
the 'Post-methods era'. They saw the era that we are currently moving into as the culmination of a
series of chronological periods when one method was thought to dominate others in the field of
foreign language teaching. Harmer describes a “pragmatic eclecticism” (Harmer 2001, pg 97), of
teachers adopting elements of various methods and approaches that work for them personally
based on their own beliefs and attitudes to teaching. He also asserts that “Course designers and
materials writers have a large part to play since any course book that is used embodies approaches
and methods. Writers of current course books tend to mix work on language skills with various
kinds of study, providing communicative activities alongside more traditional grammar practice,
and mixing in elements of learner training and activities designed to encourage humanistic
engagement”. To really understand this varied approach, we must examine some of the dominant
methods and approaches which have led us to this point.
The first influential methods of the modern era emerged in the 1950's and were based around the
view that language consisted of a series of grammatical structures that needed to be learnt through
repetitive drills. The British version of this was known as 'Situational Language teaching'. French
describes language learning as the formation of a habit: “The pupils should be able to put the
words, without hesitation and almost without thought, into sentence patterns which are correct.
Such speech habits can be cultivated by blind imitative drill” (1950, vol. 3:9).
The American version of this method, Audiolingualism, was developed from a prominent school
of American psychology known as 'Behaviourism' (Skinner, 1957). In behaviourism, the human
being is an organism that in learning is acted on by a stimulus, which serves to elicit behaviour; a
response triggered by a stimulus; and reinforcement which will serve to mark the response as
appropriate or inappropriate. Appropriate behaviour is defined in Audiolingualism as the correct
production of language structures through drills: “Learners play a reactive role by responding to

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stimuli, and thus have little control over the content, pace, or style of learning. They are not
encouraged to initiate interaction, because this may lead to mistakes” (Richards& Rodgers 2001,
pg.62). Although originating from different schools of thought, Audiolingualism from psychology
and Situational language teaching from earlier context-based approaches to language teaching, the
British and American methods of this time have much in common superficially.
In the 1960's there was a theoretical attack on the foundations of structuralist language teaching
from the linguist Noam Chomsky: “Language is not a habit structure. Ordinary linguistic
behaviour characteristically involves innovation, formation of new sentences and patterns in
accordance with rules of great abstractness and intricacy” (Chomsky 1966, pg 153). If this was the
beginning of the end of the structural drill as a fashionable method, it was certainly not the end of
its influence in the language classroom. Richards and Rodgers (2001, pg.47) cite its continuing
influence on the 'P-P-P' (presentation, practice, production) method taught on TEFL
certificate/CELTA courses in the 1980s/1990s, and that “strong emphasis on oral practice,
grammar, and sentence patterns, conform to the intuitions of many language teachers and offer a
practical methodology suited to countries where national EFL/ESL syllabuses continue to be
grammatically based, it continues to be widely used, though not necessarily widely
acknowledged.”
Criticism of structuralist language teaching continued throughout the 1960's and 70's, giving rise to
what is now known as Communicative Language Teaching(CLT). Proponents of this approach
argued that focussing only on the structure of language failed to account for the innate creativity
involved in using a language: “We do not receive language passively- we create it and construct it,
constrained on the one hand by our need to make sense of the world for ourselves, and on the other
hand by the need to operate conventions which will enable us to communicate effectively with
those around us” (Brumfit 1984, Pg.129). Characterised as a broad approach as opposed to a more
prescriptive method, CLT lays claim to activities that involve students in real or realistic
communication. In contrast with structuralist methods, production of grammatically accurate
language is not paramount, “Mistakes are not always mistakes” (Brumfit 1984, Pg. 129), but that
the learner creates increasingly fluent language through a system of trial and error. In CLT, “the
goal of language teaching is to develop what Hymes (1972) referred to as 'Communicative
competence' (Richards& Rodgers 2001, Pg.159). Less teacher-centred than previous methods, the

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learner is expected to take on more responsibility as a negotiator of meaning in activities, while the
teacher can be seen as a facilitator of this meaning by whatever means are effective. Teachers are
encouraged to select materials according to how much they involve the learner in meaningful and
authentic language, as opposed to how much they contain the more mechanical language patterns.
It is the viability of this 'Communicative competence' which this research is attempting to test. In
particular, the nature of what constitutes linguistic 'competence' in different cultures and whether
the interplay of different cultural communication styles leads to inneffective communication.
Although as Richards & Rodgers note: “The general principles of Communicative Language
Teaching are widely accepted around the world” (2001, Pg. 151), it is less clear what CLT
represents in terms of clear classroom procedure. Attempts to base CLT curriculums around a
'Notional syllabus' (Wilkins 1976), including 'notions' (time, frequency, duration) or 'functions'
(describe, request, agree/disagree), merely succeeded in replacing one set of lists e.g. a list of
grammar items with another set of lists of functions and notions. Harmer (2001, Pg. 86) describes
how CLT has “come under attack from teachers for being prejudiced in favour of native-speaker
teachers by demanding a relatively uncontrolled range of language use on the part of the student,
and thus expecting the teacher to be able to respond to any and every language problem which may
come up”. However, the vagueness of CLT in terms of prescribed classroom procedure does make
it compatible with a range of other methods and approaches. Throughout the 1970's and 80's, a
variety of 'guru-led' methods sprung up with superficially lucid claims about how languages should
and could be taught. Among the more exotic were 'Suggestopedia', 'Total
Physical Response' and 'Co-operative Language Learning'. Although never adopted on a wide
scale, elements of some of these live on in course book activities that encourage 'Mill-drill', use of
background music or co-operative activities. Also compatible with CLT, and more widely adopted,
was the 'Natural Approach', outlined by Krashen and Terrell in their 1983 book The Natural
Approach. Aligning their approach firmly with CLT, the natural approach “is similar to other
communicative approaches being developed today”(Krashen and Terrell 1983, Pg. 17). The
method takes Krashen's theories about language acquisition as a basis for procedure. These
theories made a distinction between 'Learning' and 'Acquisition', that acquisition parallels first
language development in children, is more 'natural' and can only be developed by using language
for real communication. Learning on the other hand refers to a process in which rules about
language are consciously taught and memorised, resulting in explicit knowledge about that
language and the ability to produce it. Traditional, structuralist language teaching is characterised

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as producing this learning which can not lead to the more natural, and superior, acquisition.
Krashen put forward the view that a learner's emotional state acts as an 'Affective filter' that freely
passes, impedes or blocks language input necessary for acquisition. 'Affective' variables to this
model of acquisition include motivation, self-confidence and anxiety; that learners with high
motivation and levels of self-confidence perform well (low affective filter) and that anxiety
impedes performance (high affective filter). In terms of classroom practice, the natural approach
advocated a staged 'Comprehensible input', that students are not given more language input than
they can deal with at any given stage of development as this would raise anxiety and lower
motivation. As with CLT, emphasis is placed on 'meaningful communication' to raise levels of
motivation.
More recently, 'The Lexical Approach' has been advocated and popularised by Michael Lewis. He
asserts that language “consists not of traditional grammar and vocabulary but often of multi-word
prefabricated chunks” (Lewis 1997, Pg.3), and advocates the learning of lexical phrases such as
collocations, idioms, and other fixed phrases. Influential to the writing of many recent course
books, the majority of which seem to include sections on collocations, idioms and phrases.
Although influential at this level, it has little to say on the wider understanding of a language
system, as Harmer puts it, that although “the Lexical approach has certainly drawn attention to
facts about the composition of language; what it has not yet done is make the leap from that stage
to a set of pedagogic principles or syllabus specifications which could be incorporated into a
method.” (Harmer 2001, Pg. 92)
It is now generally accepted that CLT has achieved the status of the orthodox method of language
teaching around the world, and that most language courses would lay claim to being in some way
'communicative'. However, at the level of procedure it is less clear that all of its tenets are
accepted, and the problem of 'structure' refuses to go away:- “To this day, communicative language
teaching prevails, although concern has been expressed that newer approaches are practised at the
expense of language form” (Widdowson in Carter& Nunan 2001, Pg. 36/37). In his paper
'Potential cultural resistance pedagogical imports: The case of communicative language teaching in
China'(Nanyang university 2002), Guanwei Hu writes that “CLT has taken hold and acquired the
status of a new dogma”. He goes on to describe how the top-down implementation (from the
government) of CLT has failed to take hold in China, meeting resistance from both teachers and

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students for whom it contradicts the Chinese culture of learning related to the role of the teacher
and the transmission of knowledge :- “The 'learn by using' approach promoted by communicative
language teaching does not fit in with the traditional 'learn to use' philosophy”(Language, culture
and curriculum Vol.15, Pg.99).
In this paper I am attempting to test on a practical level how effective this eclectic use of CLT is
in practice in the multicultural setting of a language school classroom, and also whether its
principles are in fundamental conflict with students' learning culture, wider culture and
communication style. Whether the claims of CLT to involve students in real communication are
achievable in the complex interactions of intercultural communication if for example, according to
Jandt (2001:Pg156), “the Japanese often perceive self-disclosing communication as inappropriate
in social relationships”. I want to analyse what happens when students who come from one
cultural tradition are given materials that reflect the values of a different one. It is the hypothesis
of this research that many of the assumptions detailed in this section made by the advocates of
CLT about the universal nature of 'communication' are often the cause of procedural problems and
communication breakdown in CLT classrooms. I am attempting to gauge through classroom
observation of student interaction, student feedback in questionnaires and focus groups just how
successful this method currently is, what problems and issues arise from it and how far cultural
differences act as a barrier to the development of the proposed Communicative competence. If
students from different cultures have different perspectives on what constitutes effective
communication then the aim of communicative competence becomes an intangible one. In
researching CLT and its development for this background literature section it is worth noting that I
could find very little reference to the effects of applying these CLT methods to people who come
from varied cultural backgrounds. Research and writing of this nature tended to be from
individual countries, such as China, where CLT had failed to be implemented successfully. This
research centres on the implementation of CLT in the more complex multicultural environment of
CLT classrooms in a language school in the UK.
B. Intercultural communication
Jensen (1995) put forward the view that the accepted CLT notion of Communicative competence
needs to be augmented by an Intercultural competence, the ability to operate in multi-cultural

18
contexts and particularly in the culture of the target language being learned. Many writers make
the point that language and culture are essentially inseparable and that one can not be learned
without the other. For example, Kramsch quoted in Hinkel (1999, pg 6) writes; “'culture and
language are inseparable and constitute a single domain of experience'...in her view, second and
foreign language learners necessarily become learners of the second culture”. The 'barriers' to the
CLT method of language teaching proposed in the title of this paper are that the method does not
take language and culture to be a 'single domain of experience' at a procedural level, and that it is
applied without consideration of the cultural background of those subject to CLT.
Also relevant when teaching groups of students from different cultures are the differing value
systems present, for instance individual societies might place more value on individualism,
collectivism, the family or material wealth than others. According to Jandt (2001, pg 177),
“Cultures may not understand concepts in the same way. Concepts like 'equality' and 'freedom'
mean different things in different cultures”. The classroom activity chosen for recorded
observation 'Who gets the heart?' was deliberately chosen as it is heavy in drawing out these type
of value judgements from students, providing the opportunity to measure whether they match
expected cultural norms and provide a barrier to effective classroom communication.
In the book 'How different are we? Spoken discourse in intercultural communication', Fitzgerald
makes the point that the use of different communication styles in a classroom setting can lead to
communication breakdown and negative character assessments. She writes that “the fundamental
components of how people talk differ from person to person and from group to group” (2003, pg
79) in terms of how to show interest, depth of involvement in conversation, the length of one's
contribution, when to stop and start talking, whether it is acceptable to talk at the same time, what
constitutes politeness, how participants react to disagreement, and the organisation and
presentation of ideas. The useful point is made that many people mistakenly believe these features
to be universal across all cultures, interpreting others' cultural communication styles with negative
character assessments, which in turn can lead to communication breakdown. It is the argument of
this paper that much of the writing on CLT, the resources associated with it and many teachers
charged with implementing this method take these factors to be universal.
Fitzgerald also describes other elements of communication style that differ across cultures

19
including prosody (intonation, stress, phrasing, tone of voice, pitch, pacing, pausing and loudness),
proxemics (personal distance and space between speakers), Kinesics (gesture, eye contact, facial
expression, body language/position),and haptics (use of touch). Although these elements are
difficult to detect from recorded transcripts of classroom observation, the research will be analysed
for evidence of negative character assessment between students of different cultures that cause
communication breakdown.
The book also includes research by Seaman (1972) that native speakers are more tolerant of
mistakes by learners of their language with grammar than they are with communication style,
which I believe is an important issue for language teachers. To support this, an incident is
described by Spencer-Oatey (2000: Pg 1) where some students in Hong Kong ask a British EFL
teacher “Where are you going?” at the end of her lesson. In Hong Kong this question is
superficially polite and can be answered vaguely, but the teacher thought the question was too
personal; “People's use of language can influence interpersonal relations, the students' question
irritated the teacher and she started to form a negative impression of them”. The co-operative
ethos of Communicative language teaching and its reliance on group interaction make it especially
sensitive to the threat of negative character assessment between students and also between teacher
and student. The research will attempt to identify any such evidence of negative character
assessment caused by differing cultural communication styles that act as a barrier to CLT lesson
aims.
The three types of data which will be analysed in this research will take into account background
literature on the nature of different cultural communication styles. Fitzgerald describes Hall's
'Communication framework' (1976,1983) that makes a distinction between 'high' and 'low' context
communication styles in different societies. The 'high-context' communication style associated
with Asian societies such as Japan and China tends to be indirect and highly nuanced: silence is
valued and associated with self-restraint. The 'low-context' style associated with much English
speaking, European and Latin American communication is much more direct and unambiguous.
Those who use a high context style often view low-context communication as insensitive,
thoughtless and even naive. High context style is also often associated with an inductive
structuring of information, where the speaker gives background information first and justifications
to persuade the listener and the main point will be stated towards the end or perhaps only hinted at.

20
If a negative response is sensed, then a retreat can be made. Low context style matches more with
the deductive approach; the main point is stated first and then the supporting evidence is given. A
problem in intercultural communication comes when a listener used to deductive organisation
interrupts the inductive speaker before the main point has been made, or considers that the
inductive speaker is 'long-winded' or 'irrelevant'. Conversely, the inductive participant in
conversation with the deductive speaker might miss the main point because it comes too soon, or
mistake a final statement for the main point simply because it comes at the end. Native English
discourse can be seen as far too explicit and naïve by the high context listener; that giving a
conclusion first amounts to going backwards. The data will be analysed for such features.
Fitzgerald also links communicative style to Hofstede's continuum between 'Individualist' and
'Collectivist' societies'(1980,1991), that many Asian societies are towards the collectivist end of the
continuum and tend to be more concerned with group harmony and that western societies are
towards the individualist end of the continuum and are more concerned with self-expression and
prefer a more unambiguous form of communication. The aim of this research is to examine how
far these theories of cultural communication style are reflected in the experience and classroom
behaviour of groups of multicultural students, and to test whether the dominant method of
language teaching fails to take them into account as a cause of communication breakdown between
students and failure to meet stated aims of lessons. In practice these communication styles should
be evident in the data that will be produced, particularly in the classroom observation
transcriptions. My hypothesis is that Japanese students will make less direct statements, avoid
conflict and generally be uncomfortable with contentious issues. I expect them to revert to silence
or near silence at these points in comparison with, for example, a French speaking student.
C. Pragmatics
Fundamental to this research was a study of pragmatics and how it relates to Language teaching;
that you can not take language out of its social and psychological context and understand it fully.
In other words just knowing about the grammar and vocabulary of a language is not really enough
to enable you to speak it effectively. As Thomas (1995, pg 51) writes; “speakers can mean
considerably more than their words say...the question of how hearers get from what is said to what
is meant”. In this research I am interested in what speakers intend by utterances and non-verbal

21
behaviour, how this inevitably differs across cultures and the impact of this on teaching aims in
second language classrooms. Again, the hypothesis is that these factors are not taken into account
by the CLT method.
Austin's 'Speech Act Theory' (1960) concerned the distinction between mere words and the action
they perform. His theory described the 'locution' of the words uttered, the 'illocution' of the
speaker's intention and the 'perlocution' of the effect on the hearer. For example, when I lived in
Spain I was often perplexed that my translation into Spanish of polite forms that gained a
favourable response in English brought nothing but blank looks from Spaniards. In English, an
indirect question in a Cafe: 'Would you mind...?' can be a signal that you appreciate what is being
done for you. In Spain, a direct order: 'Coffee with milk!' is perfectly acceptable. The indifferent
(even suspicious) 'perlocution' I provoked with my English tentativeness was certainly at odds with
my intended 'illocution' of being polite. Theories about politeness are central to a study of
pragmatics and to why people do not always 'say what they mean'. Leech's (1983) 'Politeness
principle' cites the maxims of Tact, generosity, Approbation, Modesty, Agreement and Sympathy.
The 'Tact' maxim states 'Minimize the expression of beliefs which imply cost to other; maximize
the expression of beliefs which imply benefit to other'. However, as Thomas (1995:Pg 161) points
out “Whether or not the strategy of minimizing the 'expression of cost to other' is perceived as
polite or not may be highly culture-specific”. To illustrate this, she goes on to describe her
irritation with a Japanese student whose thesis she had been supervising who would send her drafts
of work with notes attached that read something like “This is a draft of chapter 4. Please read it
and comment on it.” Thomas reacted thus: “What did she imagine I was going to do with her
work? Make paper aeroplanes? Line the parrot's cage?”. Her irritation subsided when another
Japanese student explained to her that the comments were an acknowledgement of indebtedness at
letting her tutor in for so much work. It is difficult to defend notions of 'universal politeness' in the
face of such a story. Lakoff's (1973) rules of politeness centred on notions of 'optionality'- that
allowing for choice or options is central to western notions of politeness. However it is difficult to
reconcile this with Chinese concepts of politeness, where a polite Chinese host will choose your
dishes for you in a restaurant without consulting you as a sign of hospitality. In my experience,
such confusion is common in multicultural language school classrooms, with participants
desperately trying to follow their own internalised rules of politeness which are then misread by
others. I once witnessed a Swiss French student shouting “Speak! I can't stand it any longer!
What is your opinion?” at a typically inscrutable Japanese girl who was merely maintaining the

22
impassive demeanour and reticence she had been brought up to believe polite. She patiently
waited twenty minutes until the end of the lesson before bursting into tears, presumably to
'minimize cost to others'. In this type of situation, it is my belief that the language teacher has the
job of 'managing cultural difference' and not merely teaching grammatical structures. I fully
expect this type of misunderstanding to be replicated in the research, with a dichotomy between
participants intention when speaking and how their classmates interpret their utterances, causing
CLT activities not to have their desired outcomes.
D. Learner styles
It is important when studying the effects of cultural difference in education not to neglect the
individual differences between learner styles that account for performance levels. I expect there to
be many students in this study who do not have significant difficulties with CLT activities for
reasons of cultural communication style, who are able to be culturally flexible and enjoy the
process of second language education. We can explain this by looking at some of the theories on
different learner styles. The early distinction made by Witkin (1962) was between 'Field
Dependent' and Field Independent individuals. 'Field Independent' individuals were defined as
more analytic, more able to separate problems into components; but tend to be more aloof and not
oriented towards people or skilled in teams, whereas 'Field Dependent' individuals were more
holistic, sociable and person oriented; responding in language learning to more meaningful or
communicative tasks. Although criticised as rather two-dimensional and limited, these ideas were
developed by Kolb (1976) and, subsequently, Willing(1987). Kolb proposed that learning was a
natural sequence or cycle containing four stages; starting with concrete experience (exposure to the
real world of the learner's concrete experience), followed by reflection-observation (learners
reflect on their concrete experience), then abstract conceptualisation (learners theorise at abstract
level following reflection) and finally active experimentation (learners act upon concepts, leading
them back to concrete experience and beginning cycle again). Willing interpreted Kolb's work in
personality terms, making a contrast between individuals with a readiness to be proactive with
those who are accepting and ready to take direction. Incorporating Witkin's earlier work, Willing
proposed four types of learner: Convergers ('Field Independent Active') analytic, solitary,
independent and confident in their own abilities, prefer to avoid groups; Conformists ('Field
iIndependent Passive') also analytic, seeing language learning as systematic, but more dependent
on authority figures and classrooms as are not confident about their own judgements; Concrete

23
learners ('Field Dependent Passive') also like classrooms and imposed organisation, but enjoy
sociable aspects and interaction and are interested in language for communication; Communicative
learners ('Field Dependent Active') comfortable out of the classroom and happy to engage in 'real
life' communication and learn by using and taking risks without the guidance of a teacher.
As Skehan (1999, pg 250) puts it, these four learner types are clearly “caricatures”. However, it is
helpful to take into account that students learn in different ways and have different strategies for
coping with language input, cultural differences and classroom situations. For the purposes of this
research I am particularly interested in those language learners who are successful and attain a high
level of language use, overcoming their native communication style and cultural baggage in the
process. Quoted in Gudykunst and Kim (2003), Gardner (1962) characterises 'Universal
communicators'- or those likely to be skilled at intercultural communication- who possess the
following five characteristics: 1) An unusual degree of integration or stability. 2) A central
character organisation of the extrovert type. 3) A value system which includes the value of all men
(or women). 4) Socialized on the basis of cultural universals. 5) A marked telepathic intuition or
sensitivity.
While, to some extent, we are again dealing in caricatures, it will be interesting to see how much
these attributes can be detected in the research to explain cultural flexibility and mobility.
It is worth noting that much of what is written on learner style seems to place a high value on the
notion of 'learner autonomy' or the self-reliance of 'learn-by-using'. This is clearly at odds with
many of the philosophies that underpin education around the world, notably Confucianism in
China. There the teacher is the sole authority figure; essentially the fountain of wisdom which is
then poured into the empty-vessel students. Students are passive receivers of authoritative
knowledge dispensed by the teacher. Hu (2002) explains in his paper how the Chinese culture of
learning has led to the resistance of the learn-by-using model of language teaching, and my
research will attempt to detect any learner resistance to this model in the questionnaires and focus
groups/interviews.

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V. RESEARCH FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS OF DATA
A. Questionnaires
The questionnaire section of this research comprises 60 questionnaires completed by students at
Bell Language school in Cambridge throughout 2006. The questionnaires can be broken down
into three groups; 25 Japanese, 25 mixed nationality Non-Japanese, and 10 mixed nationality
south-east Asian (Taiwanese, South Korean, Chinese). The idea of the questionnaire was
primarily to compare the attitudes of the Japanese and Non-Japanese students towards language
learning, teaching methodology, classroom practice etc. to see if any inferences could be made
relating to intercultural factors which act as a barrier to the prevalent methods of language
teaching. The South-east Asian group was to attempt to ascertain whether any attitudes from the
Japanese group were generally held across this geographical region which relate to
communication style, learner style, pragmatics and any other issues detailed in the background
literature section. In line with other areas of the findings section, the questionnaire responses will
be measured against 'expected cultural behaviour', as outlined in background literature and against
some of the more superficial stereotypes, particularly relating to the Japanese.
The first question 'How do you feel about speaking in your English class in the UK?' is answered
using a 'Likert Scale'; ticking one of 5 boxes ranging from 'Really like it' to 'Really don't like it'.
This question was included to identify any tendency to feel negative about speaking in class from
Japanese students. As production of speech is central to the development of 'communicative
competence', any identifiable tendency to be negative about speaking can be analysed as a barrier
to the given method. Only 24% of Japanese students ticked 'Really like it', compared to 48% of
the Non-Japanese group. However, if we put together the data for the two most positive answers -
'Really like it' and 'Quite like it', 68% of Japanese students ticked one of these compared to 96% of
the Non-Japanese students. There was a markedly higher tendency in the Japanese group to tick
the ambiguous 'Don't mind it' box- 28% of Japanese students compared to only 4% of the Non-
Japanese. This could be in line with a more ambiguous, high context style of communication, but
as the questionnaires were confidential and no names were taken, it is unlikely that the students
were inhibited by such issues as preserving group harmony or being deferential. 8% of Japanese
students ticked the 'Don't like it' box compared to 0% of the Non-Japanese. Nobody in either group
ticked 'Really don't like it'. Although it is difficult to produce conclusive data from this type of
research, we can see a marked tendency for the Japanese to be more negative, or at least less

25
positive, about classroom activities that involve speaking. This supports the theories of Jandt
(given in the background literature/ Why Japanese students sections) surrounding the high prestige
value given to silence and reticence by the Japanese. Despite this, the 68% of Japanese students
who ticked a positive answer do represent a sizeable enough majority who do enjoy speaking in
class for us to be cautious about making too many generalisations.
Linked to the first question are questions 4 and 5 which are intended to ascertain which language
skills (Speaking, Reading, Listening, Writing, Grammar) students feel are their strong and weak
points, and in which they have the highest motivation to improve. In question 4 students put the
skills in the order they feel they are best at - 1 is best, 5 is worst. In 5, they put them in order of
which they would most like to improve in the future - 1 most important, 5 least important.
For question 4, 20% of the Japanese students chose option 1 or 2 for 'Speaking' in the 'best at'
category, compared to 48% of the Non-Japanese group. 52% of the Japanese students chose the
more negative 4 or 5 for 'Speaking', compared to 36% of the Non-Japanese group. For 'Grammar'
72% of the Japanese group gave themselves the positive 1 or 2 score, compared to only 12%
giving the negative 4 or 5. In the Non-Japanese group 48% gave themselves 1 or 2 for grammar
and 28% 4 or 5. This would appear to support the view that Japanese students arrive in language
schools having learnt a lot of grammar structures through a more traditional system of rote
language learning, but feel much less confident about speaking in and out of class. As the
communicative method of language teaching is less focussed on 'structure' than earlier methods of
language teaching as detailed in the background literature, we can see that Japanese students arrive
in CLT language schools at a disadvantage communicatively and from an educational culture that
is operating on different principles.
In question 5, 84% of the Japanese students put 'speaking' as either 1 or 2 (most or second most
important area of language they want to improve in the future). In the Non-Japanese group 76%
put 1 or 2. Besides proving the rather mundane conclusion that most language school students
want to improve their spoken English, more importantly we might reach another conclusion that
the staffroom stereotype of the Japanese students being less eager to speak than other nationalities
is hopelessly wrong. Speaking practice is obviously a very high priority for these students, yet
something is clearly going wrong. The literature on communication style details how there are
differing notions of what constitutes 'good communication' in different cultures, so a barrier to

26
assessing 'communicative competence' comes from the misinterpretation of speaker intention or
'illocution' as defined in the section on Pragmatics.
Question 6 was designed to test 'expected cultural behaviour' of Japanese students (from the
hypothesis, background literature and general anecdotal classroom stereotypes) against what a
group of students really thought. The statements represent some of the factors that were used to
generate the hypothesis of this research. An attempt is made to identify the culturally distinct
characteristics that would cause adverse reactions to the common facets of CLT lessons such as
speaking in pairs/groups or presenting information to the whole class, contentious discussion and
the management of conflict. Students are given a number of statements like 'I don't like to speak
until I am sure I am correct' and are given the opportunity to agree or disagree and a comparison
made between the Japanese and Non-Japanese groups to establish characteristics.
a) I don't like to speak until I am sure I am correct- 30% of the Japanese students agreed
compared to 40% of the Non-Japanese.
b) My grammar is better than my speaking- 80% of the Japanese students agreed compared to
60% of the Non-Japanese.
c) I get nervous when I have to speak to the whole class- 72% of Japanese students agreed
d) It is very rude to interrupt the teacher- 76% of Japanese students agreed compared to 80%
of the Non-Japanese.
e) It is very rude to interrupt another student- 72% of Japanese students agreed compared to
92% of the Non-Japanese.
f) I don't like to give my opinions in class- 24% of Japanese students agreed compared to 8%
of Non-Japanese students.
g) Other nationalities are better at speaking English- 84% of Japanese students agreed
Apart from being more evidence of what Gillham (2000:Pg1) describes as the “thin and
superficial” data produced by questionnaires, much of this is clearly inconclusive. Answers c) and
g) do tend to suggest that there is an identifiable issue surrounding the confidence levels of
Japanese students when speaking in language school classrooms. If Japanese students feel
nervous when speaking to the whole class, and that other nationalities are better at speaking

27
English then this inevitably will act as a barrier against the type of activities central to CLT
lessons, particularly if we take into account Krashen's theories on the 'filtering' or negative affect
of stress on language learning. However, answer f) again makes the point that Japanese students
do want to speak in class, so another inference is that current practice does not produce this
desired effect.
Questions 2, 3, 8 and 9 were designed to compare and contrast the styles of English lessons in the
students' own countries and in a language school in the UK, in an attempt to identify any issues
that affect students' performance negatively. In the initial trial of the questionnaire, question 2 read
'Did your secondary/high school English teachers speak for more time in your lessons than your
teachers in England?'. The question was included in response to evidence given in initial
interviews that, in Japan, English lessons were more in the style of a lecture and that students were
not given time to speak. It is the argument of this research that the culture shock of moving from
one educational method to another produces more resistance to CLT methods and the failure of
some CLT activities. Despite this, the question produced an almost exclusively negative response,
possibly because it was awkwardly phrased. This question was replaced with ' Did you notice a
difference in teaching style between your secondary/high school teachers in your own country and
your teachers in England?' and question 3 was an invitation to expand if the answer was 'yes'.
This produced a much more positive response, with 96% of Japanese and 92% of Non-Japanese
students ticking 'yes'. These were some of the expanded answers (more can be found in appendix
1a ) :
“ We need English for take exam of the university so we mustn't mistake” (Japan)
“In Japan students didn't speak English in lesson. We just faced to textbook. Absolutely it was
boring” (Japan)
“ In our country, teachers always speak in the classes, and students always listen to teachers and no
speaking. I think that's better for us to speak in class with teachers in UK” (China)
“We don't need to talk much in the class in Japan. We study reading and grammar a lot. I don't
think it help me to be able to speak in English, it's just knowledge” (Japan)

28
“ In Taiwan, the teaching style is usually serious. Only teaching and having a exam all the day.
Most of students have no chance to speak English in the class. But my school has a special class to
let us speaking English (English communication skill). However no one wants to speak English
because the whole class (abut 46 students) has only one foreigner teacher, and all the students are
Taiwanese, we speak Chinese well.” (Taiwan)
Besides being universally positive about the type of CLT classes and methods found in UK
language schools, these comments (and those in appendix 1a) are evidence that CLT has not been
as widely adopted around the world as much of the literature suggests. The final comment
illustrates the difficulty for secondary/high schools who do attempt to introduce more
communicative syllabuses and methods- that large monolingual classes are less manageable and
tend to revert to L1 fairly quickly if not immediately. Language school classes in the UK tend to
have between 10 and 15 students in a class- many teachers would find the idea of monitoring
conversational group work for 46 students unmanageable, and it is not surprising that a 'lecture-
style' is easier to implement. In addition to logistical obstacles to the implementation of CLT by
non-native teachers in secondary schools are the cultural issues surrounding the role of the teacher
in different societies, as mentioned in the background literature. Many students seemed to be
(pleasantly) surprised by the relaxed relationships they developed with language school teachers:-
“In my country teachers are much more serious, but in England teachers are very kind and friendly
like a friend”. (China).
“My teachers in England smile any time, so I feel good. But, Japanese teachers don't smile”
(Japan)
“ We have in England more fun in a class than in my country” (Qatar).
“ Teachers ask us what we want /do not want to do in the UK and they respect our
requests/opinions”(Japan).
Whether this type of relaxed, egalitarian approach would work quite so well with a large,
monolingual secondary school class with discipline problems is dubious, but it is evidence of a

29
positive attitude towards the relaxed and egalitarian nature of CLT classes from students .
In terms of teaching methodology, many of the comments do seem to support the view that
students learn languages better through 'real communication' and by developing the
Communicative competency mentioned in the background literature section. Krashen's distinction
between learning and the superior Acquisition is supported by the comment of the Japanese
student who wrote “ We study reading and grammar a lot. I don't think it help me to be able to
speak in English, it's just knowledge”- that knowing about a language is no substitute for
experiencing it and using it. Even if CLT is proved to be a flawed method, there seems to be little
enthusiasm for a return to the type of traditional, teacher-centred, structuralist methods which
preceded it and would appear to still represent the orthodox language teaching method in
secondary schools around the world.
In questions 8 and 9 this was researched in more detail when a series of types of classroom
interaction was rated for frequency- Usual/Sometimes/Unusual/Never both in the students' own
country (Q.8) and in their language school in the UK (Q.9). In their secondary/high school classes
68% of all students rated 'Students speaking in pairs' as 'Unusual' or 'Never', 56% rated 'Students
speaking in groups' as 'Unusual' or 'Never', 88% rated 'Students moving around the class' as
'Unusual' or 'Never', 76% rated 'Acting out situations/role play' as 'Unusual' or 'Never'.
Predictably, these type of typical CLT activities were rated as much more common in language
school classrooms, with 96% of all students rating the above classroom interactions as 'Usual'or
'Sometimes'.
Taking these statistics and the earlier comments into account there must be a degree of culture
shock and learner style readjustment when students come to a CLT class for the first time. As we
have seen, for many this is a positive experience, but I feel it is clear that both teachers and
students using the CLT method would benefit from a heightened awareness of these issues. The
question of this research is not whether overall students feel more positive about CLT methods as
opposed to the structural grammar methods still employed in many countries, but whether at a
procedural level there are differences of communicative style which impede communication
between students.

30
Questions 7 and 10 were more open, giving students the opportunity to express their own feelings
on the subjects of cultural difference and language teaching methodology. Question 7 in the initial
trial of the questionnaire was 'Are there any cultural problems for people from your country that
make it difficult to study English in another country? Please give details below', but as the word
'problems' carries an obviously negative connotation, this was changed in the final questionnaire
to the word 'characteristics'. The first thing I noticed with the responses to this question was that
very few of the European and Latin American students had bothered to answer it - this could be
explained by the fact that the concept of 'culture' is difficult to define. With the exception of one
Italian student, the only European/Latin American students who answered this question did so in
linguistic terms, detailing specific nationality problems with pronunciation or grammar. The
Italian student who did refer to culture (as defined in the introduction) answered it thus: “No, the
cultural and social live is similar in England and Italy”. Two of the Middle-Eastern students
referred to religious differences, and one of these two stated that he preferred to be taught by a
male rather than a female. By contrast, 68% of the Japanese students and 70% of the mixed
nationality south-east Asian group (South Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong students)
gave answers which would fit the broad definitions of culture given in the background literature
and introduction. It appeared to be an issue they were aware of and that was fairly central to their
experience of learning English in another country.
Some Japanese characterised their culture and themselves as 'shy', and that this was a factor which
affected performance in language school classrooms. For example, this student and others quoted
in appendix 1 b) :
“Japanese almost are shy...Japanese should not be afraid to start to speak English if they say a
wrong word”.
As with many translations, we have to use caution here with the word 'shy'- that its connotation
might not be the same in Japanese as it is in English. In English, shyness is generally seen as a
personal characteristic of the individual, but what these students seem to be describing is a kind of
collective sensitivity to the mood of a group and anything that damages group harmony, as
outlined in the background literature. As Jandt (2001, pg 154) described it, In Japanese “creating a
mood is more important than the judgement, 'no' is rarely used and 'yes' may mean 'I hear what you
are saying' or even 'yes,but...' “. Perhaps in this complex and highly nuanced linguistic climate it is

31
easy to understand that this Japanese 'shyness' might be better understood as 'reticence' or
unwillingness to cause offence. Whatever the interpretation, the frequency in the data of shyness
as a characteristic which the Japanese felt impeded their progress in language learning was
marked.
Closely related to this is an unwillingness to publicly make mistakes, a characteristic which was
common in the data between Japanese and Korean students (below and appendix 1 c)
“Speaking is very difficult for me...I think the problem is personality. Korean people worried
about correct and incorrect”.
“ I think we have to be expected to be perfect...so even if people suggest to us that we should not
be afraid of making mistakes, we feel confused or embarrassed” (Japanese student).
“ We are afraid of making mistakes basically, especially in front of many people. This is typical of
Japanese and it difficult. It is said even in Japan that this tendency make it difficult to learn every
language”.
Some of these comments highlight the fact that even when students and teachers are aware of these
characteristics, they are difficult to overcome - representing years of social upbringing and public
behaviour. I know that I'm being 'very English' in always saying 'please' and 'thank you' in
countries where they are not required, but I just can't stop myself. Why should I expect Japanese
students to be any different when I say to them 'don't worry about making mistakes, just speak'?
Much of the literature on CLT highlights the importance of 'fluency' over 'accuracy' and the
creative nature of individual language, but the data illustrates the fundamental problem that many
students are unable to overcome their culturally imposed norms during classroom interaction.
The Japanese commitment to group harmony is discussed in the background literature section and
is supported by many of the comments made in the questionnaires. One student wrote a lengthy
comment explaining why this communication style clashed with the CLT methodology in
language schools in the UK:

32
“In our culture it is rude to interrupt someone, and I think people tend to think how someone feels
when they tell something to that person. But in language school English lessons, I thought it was
like first-come-first-served basis...I mean if you have something to talk, you should just say what is
on your mind without regard to other students. It is not easy for us to get used to that idea.”
The high value given to group harmony by students of more collectivist cultures must make
multicultural CLT classrooms with a variety of levels of directness a problematic environment for
many students, and also makes it difficult for them to fulfill many of the aims of lessons including
elements such as pairwork and groupwork that often involve the management of conflict. Another
Japanese student, who had lived in New Zealand and seemed very aware of cross-cultural issues,
used this cultural characteristic as an explanation for Japanese students not volunteering to answer
the teacher's questions in class :
“Japanese people hesitate to answer in public even though they know correct answers. Most of us
consider other's feelings or situations. E.g.:- If I answer the question the teacher gives
immediately, others will lose the chance of thinking about it. And some people think of me as a
swot or show-off”.
The last point, about group condemnation of anyone who stands out by answering a question too
quickly, seems particularly relevant to the literature about the distinction between individualist and
collectivist societies as defined by Hofstede. The high value that individualist societies place on
self-expression seems to be entirely lacking in many of these comments by Japanese students,
everything is about the collective feeling of the group. It is hard to imagine a French or Italian
equivalent of the last comment, and on a pragmatic level this must lead to misinterpretation of
speaker intention from all sides and consequent negative character assessment.
The distinction made in the background literature between 'high-context' and 'low-context'
communication styles and the problems that it might cause in communicative lessons is also
validated by some of the comments made in the questionnaires:
“In Japan, we tend to regard ambiguity as virtue. English is the language to express clearly, so we
sometimes get confuse about the expression to our thought in English”
“Japanese people think it is good to consider carefully before you speak...and you look a more
considering person if you do so”. The communicative competence valued by CLT in practice
values the communicative style of the English native speaker in which ambiguity has much more

33
limited value. This explains why much Japanese speaking in CLT classrooms is assessed
negatively by teachers, when the type of ambiguity and slow speech described above is used in the
context of an English classroom.
One Japanese student with an advanced level of English took exception to my questionnaire, and
wrote the following comment:
“I don't think there is any particular cultural problems to study in another country. It more depends
on the personality”.
In terms of the background literature on learner styles, this student sees it as her own personal
responsibility to overcome such difficulties. When pressed to explain further, she explained that
she enjoyed forming friendships with native speakers, getting new experiences and stepping
outside of her cultural boundaries. She was eager to distance herself from Japanese students who
came to the UK and remained in close-knit groups. In terms of Willing's learner types (1987) this
student could be characterised as a Communicative learner - active, willing to take risks
and enjoying the process of communicating in and out of class. In 12 years of teaching English as
a foreign language, I have noticed that it is a common trait of many advanced level learners to
actively enjoy many aspects of the target culture through 'authentic materials'. In other words the
students who engage with the target culture through authentic materials such as books, films and
newspapers are the ones who really achieve a high level in language learning. There is also the
possibility that perhaps they enjoy authentic materials because they have a high level, but I believe
that this could be an area for further research.
Question 10 was “What do you find most difficult about studying in language school English
lessons in the UK? How could your teachers help you more? Please give details”
Interestingly, the Japanese student who claimed “I don't think there is any particular cultural
problems” in question 7 gave the very Japanese answer to question 10 of “Personally, I'm not good
at interrupting another students, so sometimes it's difficult to give my opinion to whole class (pair
or group maybe OK)”. This is evidence that even students who do not see themselves as culture-
bound or restricted by their cultural communication style exhibit expected cultural behaviour
which causes a barrier to CLT activities.

34
One Korean student, who must have at least a passing knowledge of teaching methodology, wrote
“If they understand cultural difference they can help student's affective filter”. As mentioned in
the background literature, Krashen's 'Natural approach' includes theories relating to students' levels
of stress affecting their performance in language learning- that a high level of stress triggers a
students 'Affective Filter', preventing a student learning; conversely, a low level of stress equals a
low 'Affective Filter' and creates conditions conducive to language learning. This student clearly
believes that managing intercultural communication is a stressful situation and prevents her
learning, and that raised awareness on behalf of the teacher could help to prevent this, supporting
the basis for this research. Another student described the effect of anxiety on her speaking:
“I am afraid of being misunderstood because of poor English. When I could hardly speak English,
a teacher asked me if I did not like talking to him. It was not true of course, but I could not explain
it properly and I was sad in thinking that he might think I do not feel like talking. I think it would
be difficult to remove this kind of anxiety because this is a problem on student's side, so I have to
make a lot more effort and all teachers could do is give me time to overcome by myself, or chance
to talk about this individually”. Again this supports the earlier evidence that many Japanese
students do want to speak more in class but are prevented from doing so by a complex set of self-
imposed boundaries, cultural characteristics and anxieties.
B. Focus groups and interviews
The interviews and focus group were designed to draw out and expand upon many of the issues
raised in the questionnaires. The questionnaires were used in both interviews and focus groups, as
I generally began with getting students to compare or justify answers they gave to question 7 of the
questionnaire.
There were 3 extensive interviews and 1 focus group carried out in the course of this research.
Participants were chosen for interview on the basis of relevant cross-cultural knowledge or
educational perspective. The participants were:
Interview 1- Toshi and Masayuki were Japanese high school teachers studying at Bell school
Saffron Walden on an 'English for teachers course' in August 2006.
Interview 2- Akiko is an office worker from Tokyo who works for the British company Triumph.

35
She had previously studied at Bell school Cambridge for a year, where she passed 'First certificate'
and 'Cambridge advanced' examinations.
Interview 3- Ben and Shinobu are a mixed culture (English/Japanese) couple who live and work in
London. Ben has also worked in Japan and Korea for the Department of trade and industry and is
learning Japanese.
Focus group- 5 Japanese Bell school students who responded to an open invitation to Japanese
students to attend a focus group in August 2006. Their names are Rumi, Masa, Kaori, Naoko and
Kenji.
The comments are organised under the headings of the background literature that they most closely
relate to. Any grammatical or lexical errors are the participants' own and have not been altered.
 Teaching methodology
.In the background literature section, the Japanese communication style is associated with an
avoidance of conflict situations with the goal of maintaining group harmony- that the desire of the
individual for self-expression is secondary to the collectivist need for group harmony. In appendix
2a) Rumi relates the experience of one of her Japanese classmates at Bell language school. The
activity is a typical CLT one of comparing answers to a question, but her friend can not bring
herself to create conflict by telling her partner that she is wrong. The Japanese student is trying to
maintain group harmony, in line with a more collectivist communication style By not pointing out
her partner's mistake she is avoiding hurting his/her feelings. Although this clearly relates also to
communication style, there are implications in this experience for the common CLT practice of
'compare your answer with your partner'. Generally used with the aim of fostering co-operation
and student-based self correction, here it fails to meet lesson aims because of a cultural
communication style. If the teacher is inexperienced or unaware of cultural differences, he/she can
make negative character assessments about the student refusing to compare answers, or about her
language level in understanding instructions. The other pairwork student might also become
frustrated by their partner's unwillingness to compare answers, leading to possible damage to the
class atmosphere and relationships. The hypothesis that cultural factors act as a barrier to CLT
methods and procedures would appear to be supported by this example. However, some students
are able to adapt more easily than others to a change in cultural communication style as Akiko's
comments in appendix 2b) illustrate. Her first experiences of CLT classroom and different

36
communication styles come as a shock, particularly the length of speaking contributions and
tendencies to interrupt of other students. However, with time she got used to this and was able to
take an active part in the class. As Akiko spent a full year in a language school in the UK she
perhaps had enough time to get used to the different communication styles of people from other
cultures. In addition, she displayed many of the characteristics of the Communicative learner as
mentioned in the earlier sections- taking pleasure in forming friendships with native speakers;
when I interviewed her she was on a return visit to the UK to visit her host family and teachers
from her first visit. She was recommended to me as someone I should interview as she had passed
from elementary level to advanced in the course of a year, and as such was a highly successful
learner. Like the previous successful learner in the questionnaire, Akiko saw cultural adjustment
as the responsibility of the learner and not the teacher and method of teaching the language to aid
this adjustment:
M.F: Should the language schools change their style to help people from different cultures?
Akiko: No because language schools are part of the culture we need to learn about. Languages and
culture are learnt together. Some students come here and they don't want to adjust they just want
everything Japanese and stay together in groups. I didn't want to do that. It depends on the person,
if the person is narrow-minded it is very difficult.(Interview 2)
This correlates with the view expressed in the background literature by Kramsch that language and
culture are effectively the same subject and that you can't learn one without the other. In the focus
group, Rumi and Masa also expressed the opinion that teachers should not change their teaching
style to accommodate different cultural styles and that it was the responsibility of the student to get
used to the different style. However, the problem with this type of research is that it tends to be
the more successful language learners who are willing and able to express themselves on these
issues. These learners might have a different perspective from those who find cultural adjustment
in the classroom more difficult. However, it is worth reminding ourselves that it is not the aim of
this research to suggest modification to CLT, but to establish that there are cultural factors which
act as a barrier to the method. In support of this hypothesis were elements analysed from the focus
group. The focus group comprised of five students, of which Rumi and Masa were considerably
higher level than the other three. Two of these other three students said nothing for the entire
duration of the focus group, while the other made one comment. The rest of the time it was the
two higher level students who spoke. The silence of the lower level students felt very Japanese,

37
taking into account some of the background literature relating to Japanese students and the concept
of silence (see Jandt in background section). They appeared to be showing deference to the higher
level English learners by saying nothing. After the tape recorder was switched off one of the silent
students approached me and explained that her English was not as good as the two talkative
students, so she had said nothing. Actually her English level was perfectly adequate for
communication, if a little lower than Masa and Rumi's- all of this appeared to conform to the
expected cultural behaviour found in evidence in the questionnaire data of Japanese students
reverting to silence rather than making mistakes; this supports the findings of Fitzgerald (2003) on
the behaviour of Japanese students in westernised classrooms and meetings; in particular a
tendency to revert to silence. Some of the Korean and Japanese students expressed the opinion in
the questionnaires that Latin American and European students “speak better than Asian students”in
their classes. If deference to speakers with a perceived higher level is carried over into this
classroom situation, then we might have another contributory factor to a lack of participation in
speaking activities by Japanese/Korean students in CLT classrooms.
The interview with two Japanese secondary school teachers also provided supporting evidence of
the differences in educational culture between the Japanese high school system and
Communicative language teaching, and also on the unwillingness of Japanese students to risk
making mistakes. In appendix 2c) Masayuki and Toshi explain the tendency of Japanese students
to feel humiliated by publicly making mistakes, and the consequent desire to prepare a perfect
answer before speaking. This is in direct contradiction of the 'learn by using/experimentation'
ethos of CLT practices and philosophies of education. Also, Krashen's 'Affective Filter' hypothesis
stresses the importance of a low stress environment for the natural acquisition of language to
happen in a classroom; the type of fear of humiliation described above does not indicate a cultural
tendency towards a low affective filter. Masayuki continues with the assertion that it would not
matter how much CLT teachers told students not to worry, ingrained cultural aspects would lead to
students reverting to silence rather than making a mistake. The tendency of English
communication towards giving 'low context' direct opinions also brings CLT lessons into conflict
with the Japanese communication style according to Masayuki:
Toshi: It is considered rude to express my opinion in front of everyone.
MF: So if a teacher in a language school here says very directly to the student 'What do you

38
think?', how would the Japanese student react?
Masayuki: Most Japanese students would be afraid and just stop.
MF: Especially with a controversial topic?
Masayuki: Well if they are get used to some topic it's okay, they have spent time on studying it
then they are going easily to speak on it. But if you ask them directly even if they don't have
knowledge they're going to be like 'teacher! Please stop!'.
MF: Would you have a debate about a contentious issue like capital punishment at school in
Japan?
Masayuki: If I gave students the chance to debate yes perhaps, but first I would say to the students
'this debate is not going to hurt your feelings, it is not personal, so you should discuss as much as
you can'.....I would make gradual steps before the debate, I would take more than one week for
students to prepare for the debate, even in Japanese. (Interview 1)
If students in Japan are not expected to come up with instantaneous opinions in class in their
country, then they might experience a high level of anxiety and triggering of the 'Affective Filter',
as defined by Krashen, from many CLT speaking activities that demand an instant response. As
we saw in the questionnaires, many students have a positive experience with the communicative
style, but we can see from the above there must be a huge amount of cultural adjustment to go
from a classroom where you are given a week to prepare to give an opinion to one where people
are constantly giving and asking for opinions and making judgements on subjects you are not
knowledgeable about whilst speaking in a foreign language. Masayuki's prefacing of debate with a
'disclaimer', that nobody's feelings will be hurt and that nothing should be taken personally, is
further evidence of the Japanese sensitivity to group harmony and distinct communication style.
This supports the Hofstede and Hall theories in the background literature relating to high/low
context and collectivist/individualist communication style distinctions. We can also see this in
evidence by the comment of shinobu in appendix 2d), which describes the process of having to
adjust from one educational culture to another. She describes the difficult process of adjustment
when coming from an educational environment where it is unheard of to question the authority of
the teacher or to disagree with a classmate to the more egalitarian and contentious CLT classroom
.
 Intercultural communication
In the background literature, the notion of directness was an area of communication style that had

39
clear differences in different cultures. This is supported by evidence given by Masa during the
focus group:
M.F: Do you think the style of conversation is different to the style of conversation in English? Is
Opinion given in the same way?
Masa: I say different. Most Japanese people tend to say not clearly yes or no.....but English people
or maybe Latin people they say yes or no very clearly. It's not harsh in their culture but in Japan it
is unkind.
M.F: Would you say communication in Japanese is more subtle?
Masa: You've got to read between the lines.
M.F: Do you think English teachers might misunderstand this?
Masa: Teachers here always ask students if they understand and usually they say yes but actually
they don't.
This supports the evidence given in the background reading (Hall's communication framework-
1976,1983) that Japanese communication is of the 'High context' style, with more ambiguities and
nuances than the 'Low context' style of many English speaking countries and that a high value is
placed on the preservation of harmony by making ambiguous, inoffensive comments.
In appendix 2e) Masa goes on to make another point that this style also has other implications for
communication between native speaking English teachers and students from other cultures- that
students will even feign satisfaction with language courses they dislike rather than cause
disharmony. This type of communication is very high context and would require a lot of
background cultural knowledge to decode. To “sacrifice ourselves for others, for harmony”
demonstrates a great commitment to the collective good, unthinkable to the person from an
individualist culture interested in self-expression; this is further evidence supporting Hofstede's
distinction between Collectivist and Individualist societies. For providers of language courses the
type of end of course questionnaires and feedback mentioned by Masa are generally taken at face
value, but the Japanese example proves that different cultures can put different interpretations on
such concepts as 'excellent', 'good', 'satisfactory' and 'okay', and that the questions themselves
might be ones the subject is unwilling to answer truthfully. In effect, an end of course
questionnaire might be considered 'low-context' communication, lacking nuance and the
opportunity to gauge reaction. Also important to the Japanese student might be issues of deference
towards the authority figure of the teacher. Akiko gives examples that illustrate the importance of

40
deference in Japanese communication and also its absence in English communication:
M.Furber: You work for a British company-Triumph. Are there any cultural differences from a
Japanese company?
Akiko: It's very different. I can give my true opinion to my British bosses but not to the Japanese
bosses. It's sometimes frustrating.....I think everything relates to status and hierarchy in Japanese
companies.
M.Furber: Do you think the grammar of the Japanese language reflects the culture?
Akiko: We always have to use formal structures in conversation to bosses or older people, but it's
never friendly because there is always a hierarchy.
Shinobu's comments also express the notion of deference in formal Japanese contexts. However,
this time deference is being expressed through silence in a Japanese business setting:
MF: So if you had a meeting in Japan and a meeting in England would there be any differences?
Shinobu: Yeah it's very different. In England you're supposed to say something otherwise they just
think you have no opinion at all. But in Japan you tend to wait until your boss says something and
if your opinion is different you tend to be quiet and don't say anything. It's quite common for new
starters and new staff to maintain silence.
This supports Jandt's (2001) analysis given in the background literature, that a person of few words
is considered 'thoughtful, trustworthy and respectable' in Japan. Shinobu's description of English
speakers having to say 'something', just to prove they have an opinion at all in meetings, seems to
point to a negative value placed on silence by the English speaker; that a group member who
remains silent is treated with suspicion or assessed negatively. In the background literature on
Pragmatics, the force or intended meaning of an utterance is discussed; the speaker's intention and
its interpretation. Here we can see that in this type of Japanese communication, silence itself is
deployed as a form of communication and interpreted accordingly, possibly to convey respect,
deference, or that somebody is considering carefully. The problem comes in intercultural
communication when two different interpretations are being placed on this type of interaction.
Ben describes his experiences:

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