A study by Wong (2004) used interviews with international students. He found that many
international students, accustomed to a didactic and teacher-centred environment with less
classroom conversation, found it difficult in Australia to make the transition from passive
learning. At the same time, his study found that the students acknowledged that their lack of
English language proficiency in the classroom, exacerbated by cultural barriers, was a principal
source of learning difficulties.
While generic statements about ‘Asian learners’ should be treated with caution, there is research
evidence showing that students schooled in some East Asian and Southeast Asian nations are
accustomed to a more passive-receptive style of learning than is the norm in Australian
classrooms, especially tertiary classrooms. A study conducted by Hellsten (2002) suggests that
international students’ passivity is partly due to constraints resulting from their prior learning:
You know in China there are … lot of vocabulary and I think really good grammar.
But … we can’t speak for ourselves. We never tried it. And just, uh … our education
system … put everything in my brain, not participate. There’s only one way. My
teacher say. I listen. That’s it. So I never say. So I can’t speak very well before coming
here (cited in Hellsten, 2002, p. 9)
Here the strong focus on grammar and correct usage coincides with a didactic pedagogy, both
reinforcing a teacher-centred form of learning in which there is relatively little interest in
developing the student as an active speaking agent. Research by Hellsten and Prescott (2004) also
investigated factors affecting international students’ learning, and reported on language
difficulties experienced by them. The researchers used one-hour semi-structured interviews with
first year undergraduate students studying in Australia. They found that feeling inadequate in
spoken English hindered many Asian internationals students from participating in classroom
discussion. For example:
It’s just hard and difficult. I don’t know the feeling, the nuance, I don’t know those in
English so I … I am not a good English speaker at all. It’s very uncomfortable when I
talk with somebody (quoted in Hellsten and Prescott 2004, p. 346)
These studies provide valuable data. However, while they describe the English language problems
of international students effectively, they focus on the symptoms rather than the underlying
causes. The research conducted so far has largely focused on language constraints as they have
been experienced by international students once embarking on their studies in a new
social/academic environment. One way to inquire more deeply into the problems of international
students is to examine the influence of students’ prior learning experiences and their beliefs about
learning.
Unless researchers focus on the whole learning biography of the international students, they will
not fully understand the difficulties faced by both these international students and their teachers.
No-one who enters the classroom on the first day of a new course is a so-called ‘blank sheet’. All
learners are affected by what they already know, and how they have learned to learn. Further, by
focusing merely on the language difficulties occurring after the student arrives in the English
speaking country, it is implied that the solution of those difficulties lies solely with the students
concerned plus the institutions in which those students are studying. But their previous institutions