“I don’t talk or I decide not to talk? Is it my culture?”—International students’ experiences of tutorial participation

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.