‘‘I don’t talk or I decide not to talk? Is it my culture?’’—International students’ experiences of tutorial participation Roby Marlina Monash University, School of Languages, Cultures, and Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Building 11, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia 1. Introduction The number of international students enrolled in Western English-speaking universities has significantly increased in the past decade. This trend is expected to continue. In Australian universities, it is predicted that the numbers of international students will rise to 810,000 by 2018 (IDP, 2005) and will ‘‘increase sevenfold by 2025’’ (Ryan & Carroll, 2005, p. 4). Eighty percent of these students are non-native English-speaking background international students from Asian countries (henceforth NESB ISAs) (IDP, 2005). Since ‘Asia’ can be divided into five large regions – Australasia, South-East Asia, South Asia, East Asia, and Central Asia – and is classified differently by different people, this study and the research studies cited in this paper refer to ‘Asian students’ specifically from South-East Asia (for example Indonesia, Brunei, and Thailand,) and East Asia (for example Japan, China, and Korea). Therefore, this study uses ‘NESB ISAs’ to refer to non-Anglo-Celtic background East Asian and South-East Asian students who speak their own national language and English as an additional language or dialect and who cross a national border to further their education. The increasing number of these students in Western English-speaking universities can be a source of challenges to academic staff. In addition to performing their research roles, lecturers and tutors are expected to meet the learning needs of these students, who are ‘‘future ambassadors for the country in which they are studying’’ (Ryan, 2005, p. 147). Academic staff, however, may be unfamiliar with NESB ISAs’ learning characteristics and unsure about how best to meet their needs. Ryan and Carroll (2005) suggest that NESB ISAs need to be perceived as individual learners who come with their own unique set of skills, knowledge, and experiences as acquired in their previous education. However, this has not been the tone of much professional literature (Kumaravadivelu, 2003). This is discussed in the following section. International Journal of Educational Research xxx (2009) xxx–xxx ARTICLE INFO Article history: Received 23 October 2008 Received in revised form 19 May 2009 Accepted 2 November 2009 Keywords: International students Participation Culture Contextual approach Small culture ABSTRACT Active participation in university tutorials seems to be commonly argued as one of the learning difficulties of non-English-speaking background (NESB) Asian students enrolled in Western English-speaking universities. These students are often portrayed as being passive in class and this is commonly attributed to their background culture. Using Australia as a setting, this paper challenges these misconceptions through the lens of the contextual approach or ‘small culture’ approach. It is argued that NESB international Asian students’ participation in Australian university tutorials is influenced by the classroom context in which they learn rather than by their cultures. This paper also provides a framework for teachers, who are the most important and powerful member in the ‘context’, to critically reflect on their pedagogical practices. ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. E-mail address: Roby.Marlina@arts.monash.edu.au. G Model JIJER-738; No of Pages 10 Please cite this article in press as: R. Marlina, ‘‘I don’t talk or I decide not to talk? Is it my culture?’’—International students’ experiences of tutorial participation, International Journal of Educational Research (2009), doi:10.1016/j.ijer.2009.11.001 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Educational Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijedures 0883-0355/$ – see front matter ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijer.2009.11.001