A Survey And Countermeasure Study On English Classroom Silence In Urban High School

Silence in English class refers to the phenomenon that students usually make noresponse to teacher’s questions or totally avoid participation and communication in class.Since the English learning process of Chinese students is mainly limited to classroomcontext, the classroom participation is significant in improving student’s languageproficiency. However, most students tend to keep silent in class.Though some studies have been conducted on student’s silence in English class,most of them are carried out in intercultural context and only the university students areselected as the research objects. Few of them concern high school classroom silence.This study attempts to investigate the current situation of an urban high school Englishclassroom silence, to identify the contributing factors to the silence, and to put forwardsome suggestions to break the silence.This study is based on the theories of Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, Long’sNegotiated Interaction Hypothesis and Swain’s Output Hypothesis,340students and6teachers from Yangxin No.2high school are selected as the research subjects. Classroomobservation, questionnaire and interviews are employed to collected data. The studyresult shows the silence phenomenon is common in their class. By analyzing the studyresult, the factors related to teachers, students and classroom environment have strongimpacts on classroom silence. Teachers’ improper questioning strategy, feedback, waittime, teacher’s talk and personal competence have an influence on students’ classroomparticipation; student’s language competence and affective factors(learning motivation,face-saving, anxiety and group psychology) may stop them from active classroominvolvement; the classroom environmental factors, such as large classes and depressingclassroom atmosphere can also lead to the classroom silence.This study also puts forward some suggestions for breaking silence. For studentsthemselves, they can develop self-confidence, improve English proficiency and changethe negative learning habits. For teachers, they had better improve their questioning strategies, give students more opportunities to express opinions, improve their talk andfeedback.As for the environmental factor, a harmonious classroom atmosphere should becreated in the learning process.This thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter one is a brief introduction of theresearch background, research purpose and significance. Chapter two is literature review,which covers the basic knowledge about silence as well as the theoretical consideration.Chapter three is research design, which includes the purpose, research questions, subjects,instruments and data collection. Chapter four is the core of the thesis, which includes theresearch analysis and suggestions. At first, the survey about the current classroom silencesituation in the urban high school is presented. Then the classroom silence reasonsincluding teachers’ factors, students’ factors and environmental factors are analysed.Finally, some suggestions to break the silence are mentioned. Chapter five is theconclusion of the thesis, the results of this study are summarized, the limitations andsuggestions for further researches are presented.