A Study On Senior High School Students' Silence In English Classes

The ultimate goal of learning a language is to communicate.In an increasingly globalized world,where the English language dominates in almost all international conferences and events,the ability of communication in English has been inevitably crucial.However,Chinese students' English learning is universally characterized by huge amount of time consumption and low efficiency.Their poor communicative competence is still unable to adapt to the development requirement,though they have learned English for years.Senior school students' English classroom silence seriously hinders the smooth process of English teaching and the improvement of students' English comprehensive proficiency.The relevant researches at home and abroad mainly focus on the higher education stage,while studies in high schools are quite inadequate.Therefore,it is of great practical value to carry out a study on the phenomenon of senior school students' English classroom silence.To improve the English classroom teaching effects and students' integrated language skills,198 students and six teachers from grade 11 in Hengshui No.14 Middle school and Suning No.1 Middle school are selected as the research participants.Adopting the methods of the classroom observation,questionnaire and interview survey,this study tries to explore the following three questions:1.What is the present situation of senior high school students' silence in English classes?2.What are the main reasons leading to senior high school students' English classroom silence?3.What measures can be adopted to break the silent phenomenon?The research results show that the severe phenomenon of students' silence commonly exists in senior school English classes and the reasons can be traced back into students' factors,teachers' factors and factors from the outside contexts respectively.Both students and teachers significantly contribute to students' classroom silent behaviors.Students' own factors include their interests andmotivation,language proficiency,students' personality,learning habits and experiences.While teachers' factors exert the worst impact,their teaching mode,way of questioning,feedback and the teacher-student relationship all directly affecting students' class involvement.The outside contextual factors,such as the traditional culture,teaching material,the classroom atmosphere and class size,work least on this issue.Though classroom silence is a complex phenomenon,the causes for students' silence are situation-specific.Based on the above findings and combined with both teachers' and students' interviews,the author puts forward some corresponding suggestions to decline the effects of students' classroom silence.For students themselves,they should strive to improve their English competence and self-confidence.Teachers should enhance their educational concepts and teaching abilities and establish a harmonious teacher-student relationship.Finally,an active and favorable classroom learning environment should be created.