A Case Study Of Students' Silence In An Audio-Visual English Class

Students' classroom silence is a quite common and widespread phenomenon in English language teaching and learning. In fact, what is most frustrating to teachers is that students will not or cannot actively participate in classroom discussions. The author of this paper, by conducting a case study, explores the students' silence in an audio-visual English class in Donghua University. The author analyzes the causes that may lead to the students' silence by means of questionnaire, classroom interview, classroom observation, class recording and teacher's diary. The research indicates that affective factors, which include needs and motivation, learning anxiety and personality, cultural factors which involve the influence of traditional culture and politeness psychology and the influence of the students'previous study habits contribute to their classroom silence. Since the author of the thesis is also the teacher, she examines the factors from the teacher's perspective as well.There are five chapters in the thesis. Chapter One introduces the background of the paper and the significance of the study. Chapter Two discusses the functions of classroom silence and the previous studies on this topic. Chapter Three describes the profile of the subjects and the research methods adopted in the study. Chapter Four explores the causes of the students'silence from both the students' perspective and the teacher's perspective. Chapter Five is the conclusion based on the research, the pedagogical implications of the study and its limitations.