An Analysis On Formation Of And Solutions To Students' Silence In College English Class

Silence, a main act of nonverbal communication, is very common in our daily communication. It is a research branch which is as important as language in linguistics studies. Silence is one form of the communication practices that is more revealing in terms of the cultural values and beliefs of the speech community.Unfortunately, in the present,limited silence researches have been carried out; Studies on students'silence in college English classes are even less. Students'silence in a foreign language teaching classroom is a common phenomenon and it affects the students'achievement in study. For most college teachers, an important criterion by which a lesson is judged successful or unsuccessful can be decided by participation. The participation influences classroom dynamics and students'success. However, it has failed to catch the attention of practitioners and researchers. Silence is hindering college students from acquiring an all-round English competence. This thesis is designed to study such silence.This study aims to find out the causes of silence in college English classroom. By analysis the questionnaire investigations, the research results reveal that college students keep silence for a number of reasons which are related to social culture, students'original learning habits, English teachers, the objective conditions of college English education and so on. This paper, in discussing the meaning and communicative functions of classroom silence from the pragmatic and cultural view, lays a solid foundation for the later discussion on solutions.On the basis of finding out the causes, this study is supposed to help college English teachers correctly interpret students'classroom silence so that they can break the ice and improve the efficiency of language teaching; to help college English learners to win through silence psychologically and technically so that they can learn English more effectively. The paper comes to various solutions accordingly both on students'factors and teachers'factors. By improving English teachers'professional quality; improving teaching method; optimizing college English class culture, reticent students'participation in class will be increased obviously. By adopting integrative motivation; regulating language learning strategies, college students will make a great progress in English listening and speaking. Further more, by improving objective conditions of English education, classroom interaction can be increased in some certain level too.