Over the Wall of Silence

12 Over the Wall of Silence

student jumping at the chance to answer is in fact taking the risk of stepping outside of the group.

Student about to be hammered down

Japanese society is described as valuing collectivism and humil ity . Inevitably, your Japanese students bring these cultural tenden cies to the classroom. This is even more apparent when the group members don’t know each other well - especially at the beginning of the year and in classes with students from different faculties and majors. On top of this are the attitudes toward language learning and hab its that students have picked up unconsciously over the years of compulsory education, and they’re not always healthy ones for lan guage learning. They might be summarized as follows. (1) Foreign languages are taught with far more emphasis on com prehension over expression . (2) Much of the curriculum from junior high school onward is geared towards university exams, so naturally students have been trained to avoid mistakes.