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By the time Chinese students reach university, they have become accustomed to one-way teaching.

There is a famous proverb in China: “The gunshot hits the bird that pokes its head out first.”

This Chinese student notion of “being quiet”, lying low and staying under the radar in class is vastly different from my Australian student experience, where one university tutor told me: "We're the opposite here Xinliang, over here the squeakiest wheel gets the most oil."

I have mused about this long and hard. Why is my tutor always asking us to raise our hands in class? And why are we all so defiantly silent? While it is typically thought my Chinese peers and I are all simply "shy", perhaps there is a deeper story here.

Language, tradition, and different teaching methods weigh heavily on Chinese international students. And almost all of the barriers are language related. Linguistic pain is the common experience of many Chinese international students in the classroom – especially spoken English, which remains the biggest challenge.

According to the 2022 academic IELTS (international English language testing system) results, Chinese students scored only 5.6 in speaking, compared to 6.1, 6.4, and 5.8 in listening, reading and writing.

Our minds are ambitiously filled with ideas we desperately want to communicate, but we lack the language skills to do so. This occurs for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, we commonly confuse the he and she pronoun – Chinese has one pronoun “ta” for both genders. Secondly, when we learn English in China, we are not encouraged to speak it outside of class because it is considered “showboat” behaviour. And thirdly, while an Australian student may learn French or Italian from a French or Italian teacher, all our English lecturers are local Chinese. They tend to write and read English to perfection but cannot always readily pronounce the words.

The choice of topic studied at university matters in the language equation too. In most science and engineering tutorials, challenging questions are often more likely to have a “right or wrong” answer.

“There are very few collisions of opinions in our tutorials. Discussions are basically at the mathematical level and involve numbers and calculations," a Chinese student studying IT at UNSW Sydney explained.

Linguistic pain is the common experience of many international students in the classroom – especially spoken English.

However, in the humanities, especially in fields such as journalism or public relations, a large amount of time is set aside for two-way interaction between students and teachers and this further aggravates the humanities students' anxiety about classroom discussions.

The phenomenon, known as Chinese cultural aphasia in academic circles, is very familiar to the surging number of Chinese students now studying in Australia. In the traditional medical sense, aphasia refers to an inability to speak, and often occurs after a stroke or traumatic brain injury. However, in the classroom sense, aphasia relates to confusion over cultural nuances in communications that are deeply rooted in the Chinese culture, such as addressing elders respectfully.

It is also tied into the concept of “face” in Chinese social interactions. “Face” is an indelible part of every young Chinese person’s life education. It involves showing courtesy and deference towards to people in authority, such as the teacher. By honouring someone’s “face” you acknowledge their value.

On the other side of the yuan, “losing face” yourself, or causing someone else to lose face by challenging them publicly, puts one in the precarious position of possible embarrassment, shame or public humiliation.

Yet another reason not to raise one’s hand in class is the class sizes in China often preclude this kind of public display. In Australia, classroom sizes are typically 25 to 30 which gives students ample opportunity to speak. However, in China, the average classroom is up to 50 or even as high 66 – and the average class time is only a very short 40 minutes.

Quite often there may be one or two students who raise their heads (or at least their hands) above the parapet, but generally too much free discussion is not encouraged. The only person who is heard is the one at the front of the class trying to maintain control over these “super classes”.

"Actually, from the teacher's point of view, classroom order is most important. If every student has his own point of view, the teacher will not be able to teach normally," said Shen, who teaches music in a middle school in Chengdu, China.

The status of teachers is reflected by ancient Chinese books, which deem there are three deities: the king, the father and the teacher.

However, whether the teacher intends it or not, when that classroom order is the focus, the teacher by default establishes their own authority. After a long period of such education, most students will become humble and obedient and never question this – but at the same time they often lose the courage to speak.

By the time they reach the corridors of university, Chinese students have become accustomed to one-way teaching. Indeed, this pedagogical respect is an ethic from ancient China, where the status of teachers is reflected by ancient Chinese books, which deem there are three deities: the king, the father and the teacher.

In modern society, Chinese students grow up in the Confucian tradition of respecting teachers and valuing morality. They are used to living this “tradition” in real-life situations. For example, when primary school students are in class today, everyone will stand up collectively and bow to the teacher.

While this cultural tradition reinforces respect and humility when communicating with teachers; at the same time the teacher has subconsciously become the embodiment of authority and order among Chinese students, rather than a colleague we can share our deepest intellectual ideas with.

In the Sinosphere, the student automatically positions the teacher as a superior, a person one should never dare to communicate with casually; unless of course it is after class in the corridor when you can ask a burning question in private.

There are many time-tested benefits to the Chinese method of teaching – it inspires hard work; it is a strictly egalitarian approach where students are given an equal education.

And it works. According to the Smartest Countries Index China ranks second in the world for maths, reading and science scores. It also ranks fifth for IQ after Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong (a robust education system is closely linked to IQ).

Australia however, ranks significantly higher than China for another index, the Intelligence Capex Index, which looks which nations are most likely to leverage their smartest citizens’ intelligence to introduce technologies and innovations of the knowledge economy.

After all, Australia did invent Wi-Fi, spray on skin for burns, the software that drives Google maps, electronic pacemakers, the black box flight recorder and the electric drill. I consider myself very lucky to have experienced the best of both these worlds.

Admittedly, my new experience of Australian universities in 2024 involves far more interaction and collaboration than I am used to. Whilst I have enjoyed this, the fear of interrupting or “losing face”, is still all pervasive, because it has been so deeply ingrained in my Chinese psyche.

So where does all this this leave us for the future? It is true that insufficient spoken English language skills, different teaching methods and the tradition of respecting teachers are like three mountains weighing on the shoulders of Chinese international students and preventing them from speaking freely in class.

But while classroom aphasia ultimately damages the learning outcomes of Chinese international students, ultimately the only people who can change it are the students themselves. As celebrated artist, thinker and philosopher Leonardo Da Vinci once said: “Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence”.

So next week I will be putting my hand up in class – and I will encourage others to do the same.