Understanding Silence and Reticence

Dat Bao lectures in the Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia and has worked closely with universities in the US, the UK, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam.

'Speech is silver, silence is golden' is an age old adage forgotten in the modern day education. Dat Bao explores the potential role silence has in the classroom by analysing its types and functions both for the learners and the teacher. The book is a new concept in pedagogy well conceived and articulated. -- Mohanraj Sathuvalli, Professor in the Department of Training and Development, The English and Foreign Languages University, India Written in a highly readable, non-technical language, this book tells us that silence has a special place in the language learning process; it supports learning in ways that often escape our attention. Silence is not to be frowned upon, the author says. Rather it has to be skilfully managed to improve learning. -- Willy A Renandya, Senior Lecturer of English Language and Literature, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

• ForewordAcknowledgements1: Repositioning silence 2: Australian perspectives on silence 3: Chinese perspectives on silence 4: Japanese perspectives on silence 5: Korean perspectives on silence 6: Philippine teachers' use of silence 7: Vietnamese perspectives on silence 8: Implications of silence for SLA and pedagogy ReferencesIndex