An Analysis Of Silence Phenomenon In Secondary School English Class-reasons And Solutions

Language is a vehicle for communicating thought. The final purpose of learning a languageis to communicate and exchange information with others. Therefore, the task of English teachingis not only to teach students the basic knowledge of English, but also to develop their ability touse this knowledge to communicate. In China, due to environmental constraints, the classroom isthe main place for students to learn English and to communicate with others in English. But inthe English classrooms of many senior middle schools, only a few students can take part invarious activities and express their opinions actively. When teachers ask a question, most of thestudents tend to keep silent. Students’ passive reaction not only prevents the successfulimplementation of teaching activities but also becomes an obstacle to their English learning. Sothis thesis takes negative silence of students in the English class as the object of the present study.In the study, classroom observation and questionnaires are used to make a research on theEnglish class silence phenomenon in senior high school. The results show that: silencephenomenon in senior high school class does exist. In order to find out the reasons of students’keeping silence in the English class, this thesis made a survey on225high school students ofHigh School Attached to Shandong Normal University and analyzed the results from threeaspects: external environment, students and teachers. From the analysis the author concludes thatthe external environmental factors are: the influence of the traditional Chinese culture andeducation ideas, the influences of English evaluation system at present and the dull atmosphereof the English class. The students’ factors include student’s character, learning motivation,language skills, self-confidence, classroom anxiety, Herd mentality and face consciousness andstudents’ existing learning style and learning habits. The teachers’ factors include teachers’teaching methods, classroom feedback, questioning strategies and teacher-student relationship.Corresponding to the above reasons, three solutions are provided. First of all, teachersshould create a favorable teaching and learning environment. Secondly, the educational conceptof English teachers should be enhanced. Finally, all kinds of means should be applied toimprove the language ability of students and to help them build self-confidence.