A Study On Non-english Major Students’ Silence In English Class

With China’s fast development of economy, its exchanges with the foreign countries have becomemore and more frequent. English, as a tool of communication, has become more and more important andgotten greater attention. Researchers and scholars have never stopped their study on improving students’English proficiency especially students’ oral English, and they are trying to apply their research results intothe English classroom teaching. However, almost all of the English teachers in China face the mostawkward phenomenon of “silence”. As a basic pattern of human communication, silence is considered topossess its connotative meaning of the speech community. Comparing the previous studies on classroomsilence at home with that kind of studies abroad, it is easy to find that the depth and breadth of the researchabroad is much better than China’s, so further studies on silence is still necessary in China.According to Interaction Hypothesis, learners can learn a target language successfully through thenegotiation of meaning. When learners are trying to start a conversation with the target language, thedisadvantages in their abilities are clear to them. The self-realization will encourage them to use the targetlanguage to negotiate the meaning and help them to find out the knowledge they lack. This process canfinally result in language acquisition. The second language learners also need the chance of“comprehensive output” to achieve full grammatical competence in the target language. However, as awidely exist phenomenon, students’ silence denies students’ opportunities to engage in the classroominteraction and hinders the communication between students and teachers. It not only impedes students’English language acquisition, teaching effectiveness but also deprives classmates of learning from the silentstudents’ insights, observations and experiences. Furthermore, it hampers students’ improvement of oralproficiency and communicative competence.In this study,120non-English major sophomores from Xinxiang University are chosen to be thesubjects. Classroom observation, questionnaires and interviews are used for careful investigation.Classroom observation and interviews belong to qualitative research. The quantitative part is done bya self-made questionnaire. After investigating the students’ and teachers’ attitudes towards classroom silence and analyzing the causes, the author comes up with some solutions to reduce the phenomenon ofsilence in second language classroom.In summary, the paper investigates the current situation and the causes of silence phenomenon inEnglish class for Non-English majors and then comes up with suggestions accordingly. However, there aremany limitations in this paper, and the suggestions for future research are also discussed in the paper.