A Study On Student Silence In College English Class

Communication is crucial in the process of language learning. And when one studies English, he should open his mouth to speak more. However, Chinese college students often keep silence in English classes, which is a barrier for one to improve his or her English level and is not good for the development of the class. Why students keep silence in classroom and how to break it? This problem has attracted many scholars'attention.This study first makes a retrospect of the past research achievements. Then the author introduces the theory of spiral of silence, which is a theory coming from the field of communication. This study tries to explain and resolve the problem of class silence during language learning from a totally new point of view.An empirical study is used here. In the first part, 300 questionnaires are handed out and 289 are collected and analyzed through Hierarchical Cluster Analysis. The result of the data analyses shows that the theory of spiral of silence plays an important role in producing class silence.The second part of the study is to break class silence. The method of double-motivation is used in this part. The author tries to change the spiral of silence into spiral of speaking by applying converse thinking devices. One class is chosen as the experimental class which is tested on the double-motivation approach. From the experimental class, 34 students are selected as the subjects named the experimental group, including 17 males and 17 females. Another class is chosen as the control class with no extra motivation. Similarly, 17 males and 17 females are selected as the subjects named the control group. The question-response of the subjects are recorded and transcribed. Then the statistic procedures of Independent-samples T tests, Paired-samples T test are employed to analyze the data. The results show that the double-motivation approach is more effective in breaking class silence.The findings of the study have certain implications for the study of the class silence of the college students and for the teaching practice in breaking the silence in college English class. It is suggested that the institutionalization of some appropriate motivations can restrict the development of class silence from the beginning and it can help to deform the rising spiral of silence. As a result, it can break class silence effectively.