An Empirical Study On The Relationship Between Teachers’Conscious Concern For Students’ Face Wants And Students’Achievements In College English Teaching Context

Face is one of the affective factors that can not be ignored in foreign language learning, which may be helpful to inspire students’learning motivation, create a sound and harmonious classroom atmosphere and enhance teaching and learning effects. However, what troubles many college teachers most is that classroom atmosphere is inactive and students lack learning willingness and activeness to take part in classroom activities. If teachers are capable of showing conscious concern for students’face wants and cultivate students’positively affective feelings besides the impartment of knowledge, will the classroom interaction be improved and students’ achievements be enhanced? Therefore, the research on the relationship between teachers’conscious concern for students’face wants and students’achievements is of great significance. While many researchers home and abroad have made a few empirical studies by applying face theory to the classroom setting and have achieved some research findings, there are only sporadic empirical studies on the relationship between teachers’conscious concern for students’face wants and students’ achievements in college English teaching context. The current research is different from the previous researches for the researcher attempts to make an empirical study by doing one-term teaching experiment in person to testify whether the teacher’s conscious employment of face-saving strategies can really contribute to the improvement of students’English achievements.The thesis, from the perspective of pragmatics, probes into whether applying face theory to the classroom setting will produce any favorable effects on students’ English achievements. The present study is designed to answer the following research questions:(1) Is there a significant difference in English achievements between the students in the experimental class and the ones in the control class after an experimental semester?(2) Is there a striking difference in English achievements among the boys in two classes after an experimental semester?(3) Is there a distinct difference in English achievements among the girls in two classes after an experimental semester?(4) Is there a big difference between boys’English achievements and girls’English achievements in the experimental class after an experimental semester?The current thesis is an empirical research on the relationship between teachers’ conscious concern for students’face wants and students’achievements in college English teaching context based on the collected-data obtained from the teaching experiment, classroom recording, tests and interviews. First of all, a pre-test is given to123students from three classes respectively before the experiment in order to select out two classes with the same English level as the experimental class and the control class. Next, in the process of one-term teaching experiment, in the experimental class the researcher will consciously adopt a variety of face-saving strategies to take particular care of students’face needs while showing no conscious concern for students’face needs in the control class. After one term, a post-test is offered to gather the data, which are analyzed by statistical software SPSS12.0version with the aim to check whether there is a significant difference in English achievements between the experimental class and the control class. Gender is taken into consideration as one social variable. To make the research objective, the researcher also uses the data-gathering instrument of classroom recording to record face-saving strategies used in the class. Eventually, ten students, chosen randomly from the experimental class, are interviewed at the end of the experiment in order to obtain the feedback from the students to the teacher’s application of politeness strategies.The major findings from the analysis include the following:Firstly, there is a significant difference in English achievements between the experimental class and the control class, which means that if teachers show much more concern for students’ face wants and adopt appropriate face-saving strategies to satisfy students’face wants in the college English classroom interaction, it can really contribute to the students’ English achievements. Secondly, there is not much relationship between the teacher’s conscious concern for male students’face needs and their English achievements. Thirdly, the teacher’s conscious concern for female students’face wants does greatly contribute to their English achievements, which helps to prove that female students are more sensitive to face-threatening acts and have stronger face wants than male students. Fourthly, although there is not a significant difference in English achievements between female students and male students in the experimental class, the scores of female students are much better than male students, which may help to prove that the teacher’s particular care of students’face wants has greater effects on female students’English achievements than on male students’English achievements.The teaching method of showing conscious concern for students’face needs effectively contributes to the creation of the harmonious teacher-and-student relationship, the facilitation of students’ learning passion and the improvement of students’ English achievements. To sum up, face is of great significance in college English teaching context. College teachers should fully realize the importance of face in English classroom interaction, adopt appropriate face-saving strategies to take particular care of students’ face wants, especially female students’ face wants, motivate students’ learning activeness and willingness to take part in classroom activities, facilitate the teaching process and enhance college students’ English-learning passion, teaching efficiency and learning achievements.