An Analysis Of The Reasons And Solutions Of Silence Phenomenon In Junior High School English Classes

It is widely acknowledged that communication serves as the ultimate goal of language learning.The students' silence phenomenon is prevailing in the junior high school classes in China,especially in English classes.At present,due to the pressure from the senior high school entrance examination,the English class has become the primary place for junior high school students to practice their oral English.The interaction between teachers and students as well as the communication between students is necessary for junior high school students to learn English well,as a result,English teachers should create positive atmosphere in English classes.Relevant studies show that good classroom interaction will improve the language proficiency of students effectively.In traditional English classes,teachers pay too much attention on the learning of reading and writing,while ignoring listening and speaking,as a result,students rarely communicate with others in English,their desire and ability of communicating will decline gradually,students often remain silent in English classes.when teachers put forward questions which requires the answers from the students,just a few students respond to these questions,while most of them will just remain silent.Silence,as a way of communication,widely exist in people's lives,but silence phenomenon in junior high school has made the classroom activities and teaching tasks of the English teachers difficult to proceed smoothly.The negative classroom silence is not conducive to the smooth proceeding of teaching activities,the negative classroom silence will hinder students from mastering a foreign language.Therefore,the author takes the negative classroom silence junior high school English classrooms the research object of this the thesis.Classroom observation,questionnaire and interview methods have adopted to conduct a research on the causes of the negative silence phenomenon in junior highschool English classrooms The author tries to solve the following two problems1.What are the main reasons for negative silence of English class in junior high schools?2.How to solve the negative silence problem in the English classes of junior high school effectively?The author made an observation on three classes in a junior high school of Changchun City,including Class Five,Grade Seven.Class ten,Grade Eight,Class Two,Grade Nine,with ten lessons in each class.The type of lessons under observation include reading,listening,exercising and writing lessons.The following conclusion can be made through observation: Silence phenomenon can be found in all types of English lessons as well as each of the three classes.According to the observation,the problem of silence is most grave in the English class of Grade nineIn order to find the reason for the negative silence,the author also adopted the method questionnaire and interview to conduct a survey among 150 students from a junior high school of Changchun.The questionnaire is composed of three parts,including external environmental factors,students factors and teachers factors.Finally,the author of this thesis had an interview with three English teachers from the three grades each and nine students.The number of the students involved in this study is150,subject to objective conditions,three students from each of the three classes were selected randomly to have interview,a total of nine students were involved in this interview.Through the analysis of the results of questionnaires and the collection of data,the author draws conclusions on the causes of the negative silence phenomenon of the English classes in the junior high school students.The reasons for the negative silence of the junior high school students' English classes are listed as follows: Chinese traditional culture and teaching philosophy,English classroom atmosphere and the current English evaluation system.The main causes for this problem is the students' factors,which,include personality,learning motivation,classroom anxiety,learning style as well as self perception of the students.The teacher's factors mainly come from the teaching methods,classroom feedback as well as the questioning strategies.Through classroom observation,questionnaires,and interviews,the main causes of the negative silence in junior high school English classrooms could be categorized into two types: student s' factors and teachers' factors.To solve the root causes of the phenomenon of negative silence in English class of junior high school effectively,it is suggested that the problem of negative silence should be solved from the following several aspects.First of all,creating a favorable environment for English teaching and learning,English teachers should make use of the multimedia equipment to assist their teaching.It is widely acknowledged that language and culture are closely related to each other,so that real language environment is necessary for the second language acquisition,junior high schools should try their best to employ foreign teachers,as a result,students will have opportunities to expose themselves to the real language environment,which will endow them with true feelings of language and culture;secondly,English teachers should strengthen the comprehensible input.flexible teaching methods,effective questioning strategies and classroom feedback should be adopted by English teachers,finally,on the basis of students' English learning ability and classroom anxiety phenomenon,teachers should adopt effective evaluation mechanism and incentive mechanism so as to create a harmonious relationship between teachers and students as well as a good learning atmosphere,to solve the problem of negative silence in English classes of junior high schools,thus creating an English classroom with high efficiency and positive atmosphere.