| The phenomenon of students’ silence in English class has always been a problem faced by lots of teachers.The students major in Business English are not willing to take part in the activities or express their own opinions and most of the students tend to keep silent in the Secondary Vocational school.Students’ silence can not only hinder the normal teaching,but also effect students’ improvement of oral English and communicative competence,which will also have a negative effect on their future career.Research methods including classroom observation,a questionnaire and interviews are chosen to find out the main factors of students’ classroom silence.Some students major in Business English from a Secondary Vocational School in Changchun city are chosen to be the subjects.There are two questions the author wants to explore as follows: First,what are the situations about the phenomena of classroom silence in vocational Business English classes? Second,what are the main factors influencing student’s classroom silence?In order to see if there is silence in the classes,the writer carries out classroom observation in 4 classes.Then a questionnaire is conducted among 251 students and 24 students are chosen randomly for the interview.In addition,three English teachers are interviewed for comprehensive research of the issues.Conclusions have been drawn as follows: First,classroom observation shows that there exists the phenomenon of silence and it is comparatively serious.Some students are taking naps during class,and others are mind-absented and sat there in trance.Second,the results of the questionnaires and interviews show that the main factors of Business English Major students’ classroom silence in Secondary Vocational Schools include four aspects: students themselves,teachers,external environment and culture,and among those four factors students themselves contribute the most including learning motivations,the consciousness of mianzi,the influence of anxiety,the limitation of language competence.And teachers’ authority and the relationship between the student and teacher can also influence students’ classroom silence.Corresponding to the above reasons,solutions can be divided into two aspects.First of all,teachers should try their best to find the reasons for students’ classroom silence;teachers should try their best to get better understanding of their students and make every effort to be their friends and create a happy and relaxed classroom atmosphere;teachers can change the traditional boring teaching methods and organize classroom activities in various ways to attract students’ attention.Only in this way can teachers inspire students’ enthusiasm to take part in the activities and make progress.Besides,teachers should help students overcome the negative impacts of traditional Chinese culture to join the activities and speak up.Students should have wide interests in daily life to find out their learning advantages with the help of their teachers.Only by doing those can students gain more confidence.Teachers should encourage students to develop good study habits and at the same time try not to focus on anxiety.Teachers can provide the useful English-learning apps and websites for students to learn English in various ways so students can improve their English to get ready for their future career. |
