An Investigation Of Students’ Participation In Junior High School English Class

As a part of class teaching,students’ class participation plays an important role.Students’ active participation in classroom teaching is helpful for teachers to achieve the expected teaching goals,and students’ ability of language expression and ability of cooperating and solving problems would be improved.Since 1980 s,students’ participation has gradually become a hot topic for scholars at home and abroad.At present,the research on students’ participation has gradually changed from theoretical research to practical research.Based on the background of English subject,this study divides students’ class participation into three dimensions: behavioral participation,cognitive participation and emotional participation.Among them,behavioral participation consists of two variables: concentration and assiduous study;cognitive participation consists of three variables: superficial strategies,deep strategies and dependency strategies;emotional participation consists of two variables: the sense of joy and success;the sense of anxiety and boredom.This paper chooses six classes in Xi’an X junior high school as the object of investigation and makes an in-depth study of the characteristics of students’ participation in junior middle school English class,the students’ attitudes towards class participation and the differences among the students with different genders and achievements in class participation by means of questionnaires,interviews and auxiliary classroom observation.On this basis,the reasons behind it are analyzed and the corresponding strategies are put forward.Through the analysis,the main conclusions of this study are as follows: students generally have a positive attitude towards English learning and class participation,and in the aspect of behavioral participation,the students’ degree of concentration is morethan the degree of assiduous study;In the aspect of cognitive participation,students use more deep strategies than superficial strategies and dependency strategies,and as for emotional participation,students’ positive emotion are more than negative ones.In addition,for students with different genders and achievements,their participation in English class is different,and the difference of achievement is the most important factor that affects the difference of participation.Based on above conclusions,this study puts forward some strategies to improve the students’ participation in junior middle school English class:(1)Changing the traditional teaching concept and teacher’ s role,and establishing a new type of democratic and harmonious relationship between teachers and students.(2)Developing the model of peer-to-peer assistance and promoting the common development.(3)Adopting flexible and varied teaching methods to enhance students’ interest in participating in English class.(4)Strengthening the guidance of English learning strategies.