Cultural Translations

for TESL/TEFL Teachers:

A Korean Example

by

James H. Robinson, Ph. D.

St. Cloud State University

 INTRODUCTION

ESL teachers from the U. S. often comment on how the pervading silence or the shyness
of their students from East Asia reduce their participation in class. Put another way, Allwright
and Bailey (1991) have asked, "How is it that within a single class some learners seem to get
much more than their 'fair share' of the talk turns?" (p. 124). In answer, they have indicated that
one explanation may be that some students from certain cultural groups, such as East Asians,
prefer styles of classroom participation that are less observable than typical bidding behaviors in
a U. S. classroom (p. 129). Sato (1981) further explains that Asian students may be "constrained"
in their participation in ESL classrooms for two reasons: 1) they wait for a "go ahead" from the
teacher, and 2) the teacher does not perceive their non-verbal bids and so discourages long term
participation in class (p. 20). Chaudron (1988) agrees with Sato and adds that a mismatch in turn-
taking expectations might inhibit language learning for these students (p. 105). Unfortunately, as
Allwright and Bailey (1991) have reported research has not yet provided answers to the "cultural
traits and interaction patterns" of this mismatch in turn-taking systems (p. 133).
 The analysis that follows will provide one possible cultural explanation of how cultural
discontinuities in general preferences for sensory perception can result in U. S. teachers not
perceiving the "bids" of East Asian students and consequently decreasing speaking opportunities
for these students. It will suggest that U. S. teachers in ESL classrooms may actually be
contributing to the silencing their East Asian students, who are making bids to participate in
class. Specifically, this study will examine how the Korean concept of nunch’i, playing things by
eye, can explain the non-verbal bidding behaviors of East Asian students in the ESL classroom.

Some scholars have identified that East Asians and Americans differ in their general
preferences for sensory perception (Byrd, Constantinides & Pennington, 1989, p. 25; G.
Robinson, 1987, p. 141; Wu, 1982, p. 123). East Asians tend to use visual channels of
perception, nunch’i or to play things by eye, while people in the U. S. prefer audio channels, to
play them by ear (H. C. Kim, 1977; J. Robinson, 1990, 1991a). This discussion will first focus
on the Korean cultural concept of nunch’i and contrast it with "playing things by ear" in the U. S.

This analysis of nunch’i will first review the literature on nunch’i from the fields of
anthropology and intercultural communication. This review will provide a general definition of
the term in Korean contexts and provide evidence of similar cultural concepts throughout East
Asia. Second, the discussion will move to data analysis with evidence from an ESL classroom
ethnography that illustrates how nunch’i is used by East Asian students in ESL classrooms and
that describes three rules for the use of nunch’i in turn-taking. Finally, suggestions will be made
for how U. S. teachers can decrease the silence of their East Asian students and overcome this
cultural discontinuity in sensory perception.

Nunch’i

In Korea, nunch’i is a critical variable in the maintenance of social relationships.

Literally, a Korean could not survive in Korea without this perceptive skill. The following
definition will outline the importance of nunch’i in Korean society, relate it to four other cultural
concepts that predominate in East Asia, and provide concrete examples of
how nunch’i contributes both to successful communication among Koreans.
 In Korean, nunch’i means eye measured (Kang, 1972, p. 64, 1980, p. 41; Park, 1979, p.
92). Martin and his colleagues (1967) define the nominative usage of nunch’i as "tact, savoir
faire, sense, social sense, perceptiveness, an eye for social situations," and its predicate function
as "tries to read one's mind, probe one's motives, studies one's face, grasps a situation, sees how
the wind blows" (p. 364). More figuratively, it could be translated as eye sense or playing things
by eye (H. C. Kim, 1977). As a Korean proverb proclaimed: "If you have a quick sense
of nunch’i, you can even eat pickled shrimp in a Buddhist temple" (O. Lee, 1967, p. 28). As
Buddhists are vegetarians, the pickling process and the eating of flesh would both be regarded as
barbaric. From the perspective of language acquisition, nunch’i has been identified as part of
Hymes' communicative competence, or Gumperz's interpretive skills, or Erickson's emergent
interactional competence (Cho, 1988, p. 6). Within Canale's taxonomy of competencies (Canale,
1983), nunch’i would be a component of strategic competence.

Korean scholars have referred to nunch’i as a non-logical process variable that uses
visual perception to discover the hidden agenda behind all forms of expression in social
interaction. Yum (1987a) refers to nunch’i as "perceptiveness or sensitivity with eyes" (p. 80).
According to Kalton (1990), nunch’i is used to read the eyes and to assess "quickly and
accurately...another's emotions, attitudes, and reaction or likely reaction to a given proposal or
situations" (p. 14). K. Kim (1975) states that Koreans use nunch’i to interpret facial expressions,
words and "a mysterious 'alpha' hidden in...inner hearts" (p. 7). According to O. Lee (1967),
this nunch’i goes "beyond good sense or common sense." Nunch’i is more intuitive and sensitive
than logical or rational. It does not lead to fixed decisions as one might find with good sense or
common sense. As it depends on an interpersonal rapport, nunch’i is instead a situational ethic
used to solve interpersonal problems (p. 30-32).

Because of nunch’i, Koreans are also very concerned about what others see and think
about them: about what others' nunch’i tells them about ego. This concern is related to an
emphasis in Confucian influenced societies on self-control. Maturity within such a society means
"controlling," "hiding," or masking" one's emotions (Cho, 1988, p. 13). Expressions of affect are
found in the eyes rather than on the face or from the whole body. Because of this emphasis on
self-control, Yum (1987a) says that nunch’i becomes crucial in understanding "minute nonverbal
cues, on reading between the lines, and on hearing between the sounds" to penetrate the mask
that hides one's desires. The height of the art of nunch’i would be to give someone something
before he or she asked for it. Such behavior manifests pure genius, as it avoids the speaker
having to give a "yes" or "no" answer to a request (p. 80).

Related to nunch’i are four cultural concepts in all of East Asia--the dualism of the Tao,
hierarchical social relations, face, and kibun. The discussion that follows will focus on each of
these concepts and provide concrete examples of how nunch’i can contribute to communication
successes and breakdowns.

Dualism

Kang believes that nunch’i has a dualistic nature with roots in Taoism. In its positive
manifestation, it is the "foreseeing" of Lao-tzu that is the "...flower of the Tao (the way)" (Kang,
1972, p. 65, 1980, p. 41). As foreseeing, nunch’i is a mother predicting misbehavior by a child
and praising the child for good behavior before the child has a chance to misbehave. From the
other side of this parent and child dyad, a child puts his or her hand out asking for some money
to buy candy only after closely prejudging that the father is in a good mood (Choi, 1980, p. 122).

According to Kang, on the negative side of this dualism of the Tao, nunch’i is deception
for a higher goal of harmony (1972, p. 65, 1980, p. 41). As a half-truth, a Korean shop owner
gives the customer an unrealistic time of completion for repairs because the
owner's nunch’i perceives that it will make the customer feel better at least for the moment
(Crane, 1967, p. 12). Even Korean professors complain about how nunch’i can result in
hypocrisy by students. In class, students may "nod their agreement to what the professors say
when in their presence, but then go and totally ignore it once out with their student peers"
(Roberts & Chun, 1990, p. 23). In the first case, harmony with the professor is stressed, and in
the second, harmony with the peer group.

This deception can also result in a self-denial stance in dyadic communication. For
example, Koreans will often decline the first and even a second offer of food, drink, or favors
even if they are hungry, thirsty, or in great need. In this situation, nunch’i is a strategy to
negotiate the difference between a polite offer and a real offer (H. C. Kim, 1979, p. 5; K. Kim,
1975, p. 13). With nunch’i, the first offer is interpreted to have two potential meanings: one, the
offerer wants some food, or two the offerer thinks that you want some food. With a second offer,
the latter of these two hypotheses is reinforced although not conclusively so. With the third offer,
the second hypothesis is accepted as well as the offer itself. On the other hand, the acceptance of
the first offer would be antisocial behavior as the offerer might be deprived of desired
nourishment even though he or she used the proper forms of politeness to maintain harmony and
also to gain individual needs.
 Within the dualism of the Tao, nunch’i is used to avoid the unpleasant for ego by
foreseeing the behavior of others and is also used to avoid the unpleasant for others by using
deception. While this first strategy could be very helpful in cross-cultural interactions with

Americans, the second one could be misunderstand as dishonesty and result in negative
stereotypes if not lead to social conflict.

Hierarchy

nunch’i might not exist in Korea without a hierarchical social system. Within this
hierarchical tradition, nunch’i can function as a social equalizer. Without it, juniors would be
absolutely helpless. With it, juniors have a chance to achieve their individual needs from a very
disadvantaged position.

In all East Asia, hierarchical social relations are expressed through senior-junior dyads
and are manifestations of the yin-yang concept and of the five Confucian relationships. For
Confucian oriented societies, social interaction relies on the balancing of yin and yang.
According to Cheng (1987), yin and yang have hierarchical characteristics: the yang means the,
"creative, forwarding-pushing, dominating and manifest, systemic force," and yin the "receptive,
recessive, dominated, hidden, informed and background force" (p. 34). The yin-yang dyad in
social relations is also expressed through the responsibilities of each participant in the five
Confucian relationships: "king-justice, subject-loyalty," "father-love, son-filiality," "husband-
initiative, wife-obedience," "elder brother-brotherly love, younger brother-reverence," and
"friends-mutual faith" (Yum, 1987a, p. 77). In Confucian societies, these relationships are
dominated by the hierarchical father-son dyad, but in western cultures, the egalitarian husband-
wife dyad is the more dominant model (Kang, 1972, p. 56-7).

In Korean educational contexts, while the teacher-student relationship is not one of the
five Confucian relationships, it has been reported as a mirror of the father-son relationship
(Osgood, 1951, p. 101). More specifically for this relationship, Yum (1987b) has indicated that
the teacher should receive "respect and gratitude" and the student should be given "knowledge
and help" (p. 95). Research on student stress in Korean colleges indicates that two-way
conversation is not a part of this relationship (Roberts & Chun, 1990, p. 24), and so the
communication style for this dyad is also more hierarchical than egalitarian.

For the juniors in these relationships, both Kim (1979) and Choi (1980) have stressed
how nunch’i is an equalizer within hierarchical relationships. Kim (1979) said that nunch’i "is an
inevitable by-product of a rigidly stratified class society where force rather than reason, class
status rather than individual ability, political power rather than hard work, have been used as
methods of accumulating wealth by the social elite" (p. 6). In this class society, juniors must use
their "quick sense" of nunch’i in their interactions with seniors to gain their individuals needs.
Argumentation, logic, and objectivity would only elicit disdain by seniors and society. When a
child resorts to rational means, adults would characterize the child as "impudent" (p. 6).

According to Choi (1980), juniors use nunch’i to offset the authoritarian pressures of
seniors within a hierarchical social system. This "nunch’i culture" is a "cold war" of
interpersonal relations that creates tension and relies heavily on covert expression or what is not
said and not done more than on overt verbal or non-verbal communication. Always full of
tension, the juniors or equals have to use nunch’i to read the mind of the senior or the equal, to
manipulate the situation, and to escape any negative repercussions. Because of the infringement
of seniors, one's behavior is more often than not expressed through a "silent mind." Rather than
expressing oneself, this nunch’i culture creates a "nunch’i personality" that does not express
individual needs. Koreans use nunch’i, as a tactic for gathering data, as a means to analyze that
data, and as a means of keeping one's own secrets. This nunch’i personality is that of a secret
agent or a private detective (p. 120-1).

O. Lee (1967) provides an historical perspective on how nunch’i must be used by juniors
in their interactions with seniors in Yi dynasty Korea (1392-1910). He reported:

When a commoner is arrested and taken to an official's house, the best

policy is to look at the official's nunchi. It is meaningless to insist on our nation's
fundamental logic and principles or argue whether or not there was a crime. That
is rather cutting off your nose to spite your face. The important thing is to fathom
what is in his mind with your own quicker nunchi. You cannot ask openly. (1967,
p. 29)
In this Korean High Noon, the government official is the bad guy, the commoner the good guy,
and the winner has the quicker nunch’i. In everyday life, nunch’i is a game of scissors, rock, and
paper--kayi, bayi, boo in Korean. Reacting to the opponents previous hand symbol, each
contestant eyes the other, guesses their next move, and responds. The action is lively,
instantaneous, and yet commonplace.

In addition, nunch’i has provided Koreans with a self-defense mechanism against what O.
Lee (1967) claimed had been millennium of poverty and oppression by its neighbors. As he said:

So while we emit passion, we are restrained, and while we cry, we smile, and
while we obey, we rebel, and we had to look at the nunchi of others while trying
to keep our own land. (O. Lee, 1967, p. 69)

Choi (1980) also claimed that nunch’i was a cultural reaction to a life of pain, and oppression
from seniors and invasion by outsiders. As a survival strategy or a social release valve, nunch’i is
similar to a traditional Korean song of the blues, a story of grief and tears (p. 122). Thus, a smile
may mean pain, a nonplussed look happiness, a polite word anger, and a impolite expression
friendliness or the other way around depending on the situation.

Face and Kibun

Within hierarchical social relationships, face and kibun (mood or feelings) are crucial
interactional variables (Park, 1979, p. 76). In East Asian cultures, face is given to all by all
cultured people; it does not need to be earned but can be lost and perhaps never regained (Lin,
1935, p. 201; Robinson, 1998). In Japanese and Korean societies, kibun literally means mood or
feelings (Robinson & Fisher, 1992). Within the five Confucian relationships and their modern
manifestations, the face and kibun of the senior are higher or more important than those of the
junior for each dyad (Crane, 1967, p. 7-12). In the three following intercultural situations, one
can clearly see the role of kibun and face and how the misapplication of nunch’i in a social
situation can be disastrous.
 In an anecdotal report of intercultural communication within the business world of a
Korean-American joint venture, Dredge recounted how both a Korean company president and
the American manager lost face. The American manager in a very straightforward fashion had
proposed that the company headquarters move to a location that would be more convenient for
commuting employees. The day of the move, the Korean president without any explanation
refused to move the office. In this situation, both parties acted within their cultural rules. The
American had presented his proposal and his rationale. When he had heard no direct opposition,
he proceeded with the plans. The Korean president and the other personnel had through indirect
means made it very clear to themselves that they were absolutely opposed to the move.
Without nunch’i, the American perceived no opposition to his plans. Anticipating the other's use
of nunch’i, the Korean president ignored what he thought was clearly a dead proposal. The result
was a communication disaster (De Mente, 1988, p. 84-5). Everyone lost face: even the
employees.

An excerpt from an ethnography of the concept of kibun in Japan demonstrated how

Japanese have a concept similar to nunch’i, but Americans do not. In this example, this cultural
discontinuity resulted in an American accusing a Japanese of dishonesty.

In a conversation about a test, a Japanese student says, "It must be bad because I didn't
have enough time." And the American student, "I think I did well." When they talk after
the tests are returned, the Japanese student says that he got one hundred points, and the
American student responds, "You told me you didn't have enough time. Don't tell a lie."
(Fisher et al, 1991)

In this example, the Japanese student was hedging. He thought he did well on the test but wanted
to hide his good kibun just in case he did not do as well as he had thought. If he had exposed his
good kibun and done poorly, he would have lost face. So, he hid his good kibun to protect his
face. A Japanese interlocutor would not have guessed dishonesty but would have identified two
possible meanings to the hedging statement: 1) the student did poorly or 2) the student pretended
that he did not do well. With the Japanese version of nunch’i, a Japanese would listen for the
words and their tone and look at the speaker's face before deciding which of these two
alternatives would be the best (Fisher et al, 1991). The tragedy of this miscommunication is its
potential for negative stereotyping.
 J. Robinson in another example from an intercultural context identified how nunch’i was
important for cue emission as well as perception.

A Korean wife walks up to and stands next to her American husband, who is
preparing food in the kitchen. The husband does nothing. The wife gets angry.
She reaches in front of her husband to get something out of the cabinet. The
husband makes an ugly face. The wife gets angrier. The husband does not
understand why (J. Robinson, 1990, 1991a).

For both husband and wife, the emission of cues was very problematic. For the husband, the
visual cue of standing next to him was too weak for a response and the reaction to the ugly face
was an over-reaction. For the wife, both visual cues were as loud as a scream, and by ignoring
one and emitting the other, the husband was making a strong negative comment that indicated a
reluctance to work in the kitchen (J. Robinson, 1990, 1991a). In fact, this assessment
through nunch’i was accurate. To avoid this social breakdown, the husband should have hid his
bad kibun with a smiling face. He should also have used his nunch’i to protect his kibun and to
understand that his wife was using her nunch’i to test her husband's kibun.

In Social Context

In the only major study of nunch’i, S. H. Choi and S. C. Choi (1991b) illustrate
how nunch’i operates in social contexts. These data were collected from videotaped interactions
between an uncle and a nephew. The nephew worked for the uncle in a souvenir shop of the
resort area in Korea. The interactions reported below reflect the nunch’i required of a junior
when interacting with a senior in business related work, the importance of face and kibun in
social interactions, and the relationship of the Tao with nunch’i. These interactions are also
complicated by the kinship relationships of the two interactors. The verbal exchanges that follow
provide examples of how pauses and silence are nunch’i strategies that provide a polite response
to a senior's criticism.

In the first situation, the uncle is supervising the nephew in regard to the placement of
some mats in the store the day after some of these mats had been stolen:
 Uncle: Why did you put this mat in here?

Nephew: (2 second pause) This one? (glancing sidewise at the uncle, in fainting
voice)

Uncle: Yeah.

Nephew: (We're) going to use tomorrow (in fainting voice)...(S. H. Choi & S. C. Choi,
1991b, p. 10)

In essence, the two second pause by the nephew is a nunch’i response that expresses politeness
and deference to the uncle. A direct response to the question would have been impolite. The
problem of theft is communicated only through nunch’i in this communication and never
mentioned directly.

In a second situation, silence as well as a pause acts as a nunch’i emitted message that
might be characterized as non-plussed response by the nephew:

Nephew: (putting up a fake Christmas tree).

Uncle: Look, that branch seems to be longer than that one at the bottom.

Nephew: (no response)

Uncle: Oh may be not?

Nephew: (1 sec pause) No, it's not. (S. H. Choi & S. C. Choi, 1991b, p. 14)

In this case, the silence by the nephew did not mean that he did not hear the uncle but that the
uncle was wrong. This nunch’i emitted silence was received by the uncle who corrected himself
in a hedging manner. After a short pause, a nunch’i emitted expression of politeness and
deference, the nephew is then able to agree with the restatement of the uncle. As Choi and Choi
(1991b) relate, if the nephew's final response had followed directly after the Uncle's initial
statement, both the uncle and the nephew would have lost face and the interaction would have
ended disastrously.

In a third situation, ellipsis is used as a nunch’i strategy of communication. At the

sentence level in Korean, subject ellipsis is very common, but as a nunch’i strategy, the
participate in an interaction can be ellipted from the context. For example:

Uncle: We haven't finished that "Doruko" painting, have we?

Nephew: What is Doruko painting? (as if in monologue) Nephew: Which one?

Uncle: That...that one which looks like a mud...mud...

Nephew: Oh we did, didn't we? (S. H. Choi & S. C. Choi, 1991b, p. 20)

In this interaction, the nephew does not know what doruko painting is and so he ellipses both his
uncle and himself from the interaction by posing a rhetorical questions to himself. This rhetorical
response is followed by an indirect response to the uncle. If the nephew had simply confessed
that he did not know what doruko painting was, he would have lost face as an incompetent
assistant to the uncle and the uncle would have lost some degree of face as his choice of assistant
would be revealed to be less than brilliant. By ellipting the participants in the interaction with a
rhetorical question to himself and then making the indirect reference to the paintings in front of
them, the nephew uses a nunch’i strategy to cover up his ignorance and save his face. The uncle
participates in this nunch’i communication by defining doruko painting as a mud painting.

In these three interactions, the nephew used the three nunch’i strategies of pauses, silence
and ellipsis to preserve harmony in the relationship with the uncle and to maintain his face as
well as the face of the uncle. These strategies emitted messages to the uncle that were figured out
by the uncle and then responded to in kind within two channels of communication: one at the
literal level and one at the meta-message level.

Overall, the above analysis has shown how four cultural concepts that predominant in
East Asia are part of the interactional pattern that utilizes nunch’i. Specifically, the analysis has
given examples of how nunch’i can be used by juniors to read the face and kibun of seniors in
hierarchical social relations and also by equals in daily conversational battling in order either to
predict the other's behavior or to use deception to protect the other from a harsh reality. In Japan,
the concept of kan is similar to nunch’i. Literally kan means "to grasp" and means intuition, or a
"sixth sense" (White, 1987, p. 43). The concepts of ishin-denshin (See Tsujimure,
1987), haragei, honne and tatemae (See Matsumoto, 1984) are also closely related to nunch’i-
like behavior. Similarly, Wu (1982) has identified that Chinese also have a preference for visual
channels of communication.

Ethnography of an ESL Classroom

The ethnographic references below come from four different ESL classes with both East
Asian and other ESL students. This study differs from other classroom based research on turn-
taking as it did not depend only on audio tapes (Allwright 1980), think aloud protocols or diary
studies (Allwright & Bailey, 1991). For the most part, previous studies have focused on what is
said. This study focuses more on non-verbal behavior. Non-participant observations were made
by both American and Chinese graduate students. These students took ethnographic notes of the
classes and later produced an ethnographic record based on their notes and a review of the
videotape. The video camera was positioned at the front of the class so that non-verbal
expressions by the students could be observed. Data from classroom observations were then
codified on tally sheets for analysis to determine the extent that the three above nunch’i based
rules of East Asian students influenced the turn taking system in multi-ethnic ESL classes.

One of the goals of the ethnography was to identify in the classroom the tendency for
East Asian students to use nunch’i or to "play things by eye" rather than by ear. In the U. S.,
playing things by ear translates into a preference for audio learning. For example, U. S.
classrooms are dominated by the following verbal exchange: teacher questions, student answers,
and teacher responds (Gage & Berliner, 1975, pp. 588-93). Specifically,

T. What was that program that we just watched really about? In one word what was it
about? Just one word. Dominic.

P. An owl.

T. No, it wasn't about an owl. (Holmes, 1978, p. 143)

In East Asian classrooms, however, teachers use a nunch’i based or visual channel of
communication; they fill the blackboard with the lecture, and the students then write all this
information in their notebooks (K. Lee, 1982, p. 110; J. Robinson, 1994). The teacher and the
students emphasize visual learning or playing things by eye. For turn-taking, the principal
investigator had noticed in demonstration classes taught in Korea and Indonesia that students
who made eye contact with the teacher were almost always prepared to answer questions (J.
Robinson, 1990a). This ethnography was aimed at a further description of this eye contact as a
bid in turn-taking. For this research, a bid is defined as an attempt by the student to speak in
class. A call-on refers to the teacher selecting a student to speak in class. A bid and a call-on
constitute a turn in the turn-taking process.

Three Nunch'i Rules

In the ethnographic record that follows, excerpts will be analyzed to illustrate how East
Asian students use a different set of turn-taking rules in class than American students and
how nunch’i or preferences for visual perception are a key element in these rules.
Three nunch’i based rules of bidding by East Asian students will be proposed. Later,
quantification of the data will test these three nunch’i based rules.

Within the turn-taking rules of East Asian students, the first rule would be that eye
contact is a strong bid to speak in class. In other words, eye contact by an East Asian student is
similar to calling out an answer by American students (See van Lier, 1988, p. 110-1). A typical
turn-taking interaction from the ethnographic record would follow the pattern below:

In an ESL reading class, the American teacher asked a question. One Japanese
student was looking straight ahead. After hearing the question, the student's head moved
quickly to the left, and she made eye contact with the teacher. The teacher called on her,
and she answered confidently and correctly.

Using nunch’i to read student eye contact, this teacher was able to identify a student who was
prepared to answer the question. During the observation period, the teacher was able to find
students to answer most classroom questions with this nunch’i strategy. In the U. S., this same
eye contact by students simply means that the students are paying attention--not that they know
the answer. Using this nunch’i strategy with American students, the principal investigator found
that the American students who made eye contact were not necessarily prepared to answer
questions in class.

The second rule of bidding is that a raised chin or head is a bid to speak. This less overt
type of bid may have a meaning similar to a raised hand which would be a more typical bid in

U. S. contexts (See van Lier, 1988, p. 110-11). The next excerpt from one of the Chinese
observers illustrates the second rule:

After completing an in-class reading assignment, the professor asks a question on the first
passage. One Japanese female raises her head several times, indicating that she knows the
answer. With the professor's prompt, she finally speaks out with confidence.

In this turn-taking situation, the Japanese student bids for a turn by only raising her head
continuously until the U. S. teacher reads her preparedness to respond. This head movement did
not include eye contact and so was less overt than the eye contact reported above.

In an East Asian cultural context, these two nunch’i based rules are respectful non-verbal
or indirect cues that recognize the face and kibun of the teacher within the hierarchical teacher-
student relationship. A more overt action, such as raising a hand or calling out, could be both an
insult to and a challenge of the teacher. As an insult, the more overt behavior would mean that
the teacher does not have enough nunch’i or sense to behave properly in the classroom. As a
challenge, these overt behaviors would be expressions of a more egalitarian relationship with the
teacher. They would communicate that the student wants to stand out among his or her peers. As
the teacher has the role of standing out in front of the class, this overt action would be an attempt
to take on the role of the teacher. In other words, the student would be usurping the teacher's role
in the dyadic relationship and so challenging the teacher in the classroom. These overt
expressions would not give the teacher proper face and probably would upset the teacher's kibun.

Moreover, this type of overt action would break the egalitarian relationship of the student
with the peer group. Japanese students have reported in interviews that this type of action would
be competitive and would be regarded as "showing off" by fellow students. As a non-cooperative
action, it would isolate and alienate a student from the peer group. These Japanese students also
report that in their classes with American students they feel embarrassed for students who raise
their hands and either are not called on or have to keep their hands raised for a long time before
being called on by the teacher. In other words, a Japanese would view raising a hand as a face or
a kibun threatening behavior.

The third rule of this nunch’i based system would be that student avoid or reject bids with
non-verbal cues, such as head shaking, eye blinking, and head bowing. From the observations, it
became apparent that some students avoided bids by bowing their heads, hiding their heads in
books, or shaking their heads in a manner that would mean a lack of comprehension. In addition,
some of the observers noted that quick and subtle head or eye lid moves were somewhat
common when students were asked questions for which they were unprepared.

Ethnographic Data

Figure 1 presents the quantified data findings for two of the classrooms observed. These
two classes included 94 classroom turns from 13 class periods: eight periods of a class on
cultural orientation and five of ESL reading.

In Figure 1, the differences between East Asian and non-East Asian ESL students can be
seen with gender differences also acting as an important variable. In general, East Asian students
tended to use less overt non-verbal bids such as eye contact and chin movements more and hand
raising or call outs much less in bidding for turns, while non-East Asian students had a broader
range of bidding styles that included both more and less overt bids. Consequently, the most
striking difference was the end result: non-East Asian males and females received over 55% of
the bids in class even though they were less than 10% of the class.

Figure 1: Distribution of bids by student categories

_____________________________________________________________________________

Student Asian Asian non-Asian non-Asian Total

male female male female

Bid

process

=====================================================================

chin bid 0 2 2 0 4

chin-eye bid 3 4 0 0 7

eye bid 17 1 15 3 36

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

less overt 20 7 17 3 46

=====================================================================

chin-eye-hand bid 2 0 5 0 7

eye-hand bid 2 2 7 1 12

hand bid 1 1 6 0 8

(all hand bids 5 3 18 1 27)

call out 5 2 8 6 21

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

more overt 10 5 25 7 48

=====================================================================

Total 30 12 42 10 94

_____________________________________________________________________________

East Asian Males

This group was dominated by Malaysian Chinese and Japanese males. They represented
over 50% of the classes and accounted for about one-third of the bids in these 13 class periods.
For these East Asian males, they tended to use less overt bids such as chin movements and eye
contact. They used eye contact to bid for turns almost two-thirds of the time and used chin
movements occasionally to begin a bidding process that would then include either eye contact
and a raised hand. At the same time, they did call out answers without any other visible bid about
one-sixth of the time and included a raised hand in about one-sixth of their bids. Still, four-fifths
of the bids from East Asian males began with either a chin movement or eye contact although
fully one-third included some overt bids either through a call out or a raised hand.

East Asian Females

This group was also dominated by Malaysian Chinese and Japanese students. These
students were over one-fourth of both classes, but only accounted for 12 of 94 bids (about 13%)
during the 13 class periods. The data are so slim to make the analysis difficult, but it appears
that, in contrast to the males, East Asian females tend to use bids that were less overt than their
gender opposites from the same countries. In general, East Asian females tended to use use chin
movements almost half the time to bid for turns, with an almost equal percentage of eye contact
moves for bids, but at the same time, the overt bids of females from East Asia totaled a higher
percentage than those of their males cohorts from the same country. This distribution appears

bimodal with an almost equal number of more and less overt bids, but the most striking
characteristic is the lack of bids from this population.

Non-East Asian Males

Non-East Asians were the minority in both classes as they made up about a fourth of the
two classes with a much greater number of males than females. But, they accounted for over
50% of the bids in the two classes. Of the 42 bids observed, 25 were classified as more overt and
17 as less overt. While the more overt bids certainly outnumber the less overt, it appears that
these students have a fairly balanced set of bidding styles. For example, 27 of their bids included
eye contact--a less overt bid. But, 26 of their bids included either call outs or a raised hand--a
more overt bid. Significantly, hand raising is a much more common element of bidding for turns.

Non-East Asian females

 For the last contrast, non-East Asian females tended to bid through eye contact or to call
out. Two-thirds of their bids were given after they called out the answer. They tended to call out
much more often than the other groups relative to their few numbers but only getting the turn
about half the time.

In short, the above figure illustrates a picture where the first nunch’i rules is used by both
East Asian and non-East Asian males but less so by females. The second nunch’i tends to be
used more by East Asian females although in combination with the first rule. What is significant
is that the bidding system of the East Asian students tends to de-emphasize call outs and hand
raising in favor of less overt behaviors, while the systems of the non-East Asian students appear
more balanced in their inclusion of call outs and hand raising. It is not that East Asian students
can not or will not call out or raise a hand, but more that they do it much less often and perhaps
also not as quickly as their non-East Asian counterparts.

Non-verbal Turn Avoidance

Concerning the third nunch’i based rule, the data more than for the first two support the
argument for differences in the style of avoiding bids. For East Asian males, they tended to bow
their hand low when rejecting an unwanted bid with one case of eye blinking behavior being
used for the same purpose. For East Asian females, the same trend was noticed. For non-
East Asian males, bowed heads were used half as frequently as with East Asian males to reject
an unwanted bid. For non-East Asian females, no student used non-verbal cues to reject a bid.

While the data from this ethnographic record are limited in a wide variety of ways, they
do demonstrate a few general rules of turn-taking for East Asian students in ESL classrooms.
This turn-taking system is based on the emission of and the sensitivity to covert and indirect non-
verbal expressions. Using and depending on teachers to use nunch’i, these students emit
messages that are probably not perceived by many of their ESL teachers and may react strongly
to expressive negative feedback from these teachers.

FOR ESL TEACHERS

 The above analysis has presented evidence for the existence of a discontinuity in sensory
perception within the ESL classroom between ESL teachers from the U. S. and East Asian
students. While this analysis has focused on the Korean concept of nunch’i, evidence certainly
exists to suggest that similar phenomena are a part of the interaction pattern in China and Japan.
For this analysis, three major implications are salient for ESL teachers with East Asian students.

First and foremost, ESL teachers must recognize that East Asian students may be silent in
our classes, because they have been partially silenced by their teachers. Perhaps, the culture
shock of the American academic setting is the source of some of the silence. Perhaps, having
teachers who use audio rather than visual channels of perception shocks these students into
silence. Or more simply, perhaps, the teacher never calls on these students because the teacher
never realizes that they are ready, willing, and bidding to answer. To fully appreciate this
phenomenon, the teacher has to see a student make the slight move of the head toward the
teacher and then make eye contact, as a bid to answer a question. Next, the teacher will need to
see the more subtle or more tentative bids of simply raising the chin without moving the head
sideways or making eye contact. With this new awareness, ESL teachers should be able to
use nunch’i to perceive these less overt and more indirect bids by East Asian students. At the
same time, for a better awareness of these nonverbal bids, the teacher may need to change some
other behaviors. For example, when asking a question, more wait time may be needed to allow
the students from East Asia to make their bids (Allwright & Bailey, 1991, p. 135). In Japan, for
example, a typical wait time after a question would be 15 seconds as opposed to seven seconds in
the U. S. (Archer, 1991, p. 122).

In addition, ESL teachers need to be careful that they do not judge nunch’i related
behavior by East Asian students as dishonesty. Such a misjudgment based on cultural differences
would at the least be ethnocentric and could be called racist behavior. Within intercultural
communications, the greatest frustration comes from emitting a positive message and having it
received as a negative one. When an East Asian student changes the truth for the benefit of the
face or kibun of the teacher or a third party, perceiving that student as dishonest is a grave
injustice and a terrible misunderstanding of reality within cross-cultural contexts.

In conclusion, misunderstandings because of differences between people

from nunch’i and non-nunch’i cultures are certainly not the only reason for quiet East Asian
students in ESL classrooms nor the only source of ethnocentric or racist attitudes or behaviors.
At the same time, an understanding of this cultural discontinuity in sensory perception can be a
beginning to understanding our students better and understanding our role as teachers within our
cross-cultural classrooms. Most importantly, this variable is one that we, as teachers, can control
if we are aware of it.

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