A problem of growing concern in U.S. higher education and foreign language education is the inability of international graduate students in English as a Second Language (ESL) settings to adequately adapt to an active oral classroom participation mode in their content courses. Although much research has been conducted to explore and explain the possible relationships between ESL learners' linguistic knowledge and language performance, little effort has been made to address their oral classroom participation mode beyond ESL classrooms.
The purpose of this study is to describe, analyze, and interpret the selected international graduate students' perceptions of oral classroom participation in their content courses. Twenty Asian graduate students in a midwestern university in both social science and natural science majors were selected from the six most populous international groups in American higher education--Taiwanese, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian and Hong Kong Chinese.
Data collected via both interviews and class observations found both positive and negative perceptions of the participants towards their oral classroom participation. While cognitive, affective, linguistic, communication, and strategic benefits were confirmed by the participants, concerns were also expressed over cognitive, affective, and communication domains. Among affective, cognitive, linguistic, pedagogical/ environmental, and socio-cultural factors, cognitive as well as pedagogical/environmental factors were strongly expressed as facilitative for oral classroom participation, while socio-cultural as well as affective factors were regarded as debilitative. Gender, personality, content knowledge, prior experience, communication skills, lesson type, and class size were found to affect the participation mode though they varied in degrees, while major of study, and length of stay seemed to have less effect on oral participation. No cross-culture differences among Asian students was found.
The data suggest that international graduate students have the potential to speak up in their content courses. Also suggested is the fact that socio-cultural factors are mainly responsible for the participants' reticent behavior in terms of oral classroom participation.
Recommendations for international graduate students, faculty members, American peers as well as U.S. institutions of higher education are made to help international graduate students gain confidence in oral classroom participation through consciousness-raising and cultural adaptation. Directions for further research on the topic are also recommended.