I recently started teaching a class to grad students, most of whom are foreign-born (China and India mainly). I have a lot more sympathy for my college instruc

I recently started teaching a class to grad students, most of whom are foreign-born (China and India mainly). I have a lot more sympathy for my college instructors now that I see it from the other side: If students don't speak, I have very little information on whether they are learning the info (which in turn, reflects how well I'm teaching it). Homework is my main clue, and that involves a delay (plus I have a healthy bias against busy-work homework, so while I give assignments it does not count for/against your final grade). I believe this is exacerbated by the sorts of cultural differences you highlight - I'm (relatively) loud and brash, many of them are reserved. I have no doubt there are lots of signals of confusion/understanding that I'm missing, but I don't know how to find them either. I recently got my mid-term evaluations from the students (anonymous) - I was shocked to see many of them spent (or at least claimed, which I have to trust in absence of other data) 11+ hours/week on the work outside of class - triple what I expected. (and the answers formed a believable curve of results, so again, I have to trust it absent other data). I had only one student up until that point say how much time they were spending. Everyone else was silent.