A Study On The Correlation Between Junior Middle School Students' Perceptions Of English Classroom Environment And Their Classroom Behavior

English teaching,a kind of teaching activity,is carried out in a certain English classroom environment.Human's external behavior is the result of the interaction between the individual's surroundings and their internal factors according to Lewin's(1936)theory of psychological dynamic field.Therefore,classroom environment may directly or indirectly affect students' classroom behavior.The purpose of investigating the relationship between the perceptions of classroom environment and students' classroom behavior is to explore the factors that influence students' classroom behavior,which is of positive significance to optimize the English classroom environment and improve the quality of teaching.Based on Lewin's “field” theory and Murray's Needs-Press theory,this paper,involving215 Grade 8 students from a middle school in Yining City,makes an empirical study to investigate the relationship between students' perceptions of classroom environment and their classroom behavior with the quantitative and qualitative research methods.Here are the specific research questions:1.What are overall situation of junior middle school students' perceptions of the classroom environment and their performance of the classroom behavior?2.What are the differences between the perceptions of classroom environment and the performance of classroom behavior between high level group of students and low level group of students?3.Is there a correlation between the junior middle school students' perceptions of classroom environment and classroom behavior? If so,what kind of correlation?4.To what extent do students' perceptions of classroom environment predict their classroom behavior?Descriptive statistical analysis,independent sample t-test,correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis are adopted to find the results:Firstly,On the whole,junior middle school students' perceptions of the classroom environment and their classroom behavior are positive.On the perceptions of classroom environment,the perceptions of student cohesiveness is the most satisfactory,while the perceptions of both teacher support and student involvement are not satisfactory.Students' performance of classroom behavior reach a moderate to high level on all dimensions except that of dominating others at the moderate level.Secondly,compared with low level group,high level group of students have a more positive attitude toward the same English classroom environment.In addition,there are significant differences in perceptions of each dimension of classroom environment between high level group of students and low level group of students.What's more,in the same English class,the high level group of students outperform low level group one.Additionally,differences between high level group of students' and low level group of students' performance are statistically significant for all six factors except the only one factor of dominating others,among which the two dimensions of verbal participation and self-assurance have the biggest difference.Thirdly,students' perceptions of classroom environment positively correlates with their classroom behavior,but the degree was different.Finally,students' classroom behavior is predicted by every factor of classroom environment except only one factor of teacher support.In addition,student involvement has the strongest predictive power on all dimensions of classroom environment,followed by student cohesiveness,which supports the significance of student involvement in the classroom environment.The above results show that students' perceptions of classroom environment has a great impact on classroom behavior.Therefore,certain practical pedagogical implications are given to create a good classroom environment,that is,teachers ought to provide more help and support to the underachievers;teachers ought to create different situations to encourage students to actively participate in the classroom;in addition,teachers also should pay attention to cultivate students' critical thinking and cooperation spirit.