[H. Brown]

I teach cyberlaw and computer ethics at Florida State University in the Computer Science Department. As you can imagine, we have a lot of Asian students, mainly from China. My classes are discussion classes and heavily Socratic due to the subject matter, and I have noticed this tendency toward shyness in class, particularly among the Chinese. I found that although some of the reluctance is due to the language barrier, most of it is cultural. I spoke with some of the Chinese students about this, and they were quite expressive on an individual basis. Many told me they were very uncomfortable talking in class and particularly uncomfortable about expressing an opinion, or even worse, questioning or disagreeing with the instructor. This is a problem, because disagreeing with the instructor is a required element in my courses! It seems this is not done in China. The instructor speaks, the students copy down his words verbatim, and that’s it.

I don’t have any easy answers, but meeting with the international students individually and explaining the U.S. style of education might help. I did succeed in getting a few to open up, but many were still reluctant.

User Detail :  

Name : H. Brown, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Agnostic Methodist Taoist, Age : 31, City : Tallahassee, State : FL, Country : United States, Occupation : Attorney/grad student, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class, 

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