An Empirical Study Of College English Classroom Environment

Classroom environment is every situation and condition influencing learning activitiesand learning effects. Actually, the research have reflected that learning will be greatlyimproved when students study in a positive and comfortable classroom environment (Waldrip&Fisher，2003). In China, due to the lack of natural and relaxed English learningenvironment, English classroom teaching becomes the main channel of language input. Thusit is the important task for English teaching reform and English teachers to assess the existingclassroom environment objectively and exactly and construct new and friendly classroomenvironment in order to provide favorable supporting conditions.Guided by the theory of Social Constructivism, the study took200non-English majorstudents and10college English teachers in Northwest A&F University as subjects，usingstratified sampling and random sampling, by the instruments of college English classroomenvironment assessment scale, which is adapted to measure the seven dimensions of thecollege English classroom environment of college English Reading and Writing course(intensive reading course), namely Student Cohesiveness, Teacher Support, Involvement,Study, Task Orientation, Cooperation and Equity. Then the empirical data was put intocomputer and analyzed in Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS18.0) by the method ofdescriptive research and exploratory research. In addition, after obtaining the statistical resultsof questionnaire survey, the author did several interviews with teachers and students to getsome important qualitative information, in order to assess non-English majors’ Englishclassroom environment in Northwest A&F University objectively and systematically.The results of the study indicate：Firstly, college English classroom environment inNorthwest A&F University is ample and in an open state; Secondly, there is no perceptiondifference on college English classroom environment in Northwest A&F University betweenmale and female students; Thirdly, teacher support is insufficient and involvement is notenough as well.Moreover, several suggestions on how to improve and construct college Englishclassroom environment in the chapter of discussion: Improve the teachers’ self-efficacy; Go down the platform and talk with students; Assess students reasonably; Treat everyone equally;Apply Rosenthal Effect; Increase teachers’ emotional input; Encourage students to raisequestions; Design different classroom activities according to preferences to differentclassroom language task of students of different gender; Introduce multimedia teaching inReading and Writing class; Carry out small class teaching in the way of reducing the classtime.