An Analysis Of Students' Silence In Oral English Class

Lack of active participation by students in classroom activities is one of the major concerns which have been widely discussed. Most researches on silence abroad are based on multi-culture classroom settings, while the student silence study in domestic is quite limited. With the vocational college students as the subjects, the thesis attempts to find out the causes of students' silence in the oral class, moreover, to demonstrate how silence creates certain meanings and functions through the interaction of student silence and performance in classroom communication. It is hoped that the findings of this research can facilitate the students' oral proficiency and at the same time provide some help for the oral English teacher.Through conversational analysis in classroom contexts and discussions about the results of students' questionnaire, interviews and class observations, it is discovered that power relations in educational settings are constructed and reproduced through silence. That is to say teachers have the right to control the discourse of the classroom and decide when they speak and when they allow students to speak. However, students can also use silence to negotiate power relationship with the teacher, although their silence in general marks subordinate status. It is revealed that students can use their silence positively or negatively. On the positive side, silence can perform the acts such as: to agree, to show respect, to create concentration and dignity, to consider; on the negative side, silence can perform the following acts: to refuse, to disagree, to show anger, to indicate a lack of enthusiasm. It is no doubt why Chinese students avoid speaking in classroom context. On the one hand they would like to save the negative face of the teacher, on the other hand they want to save their positive face, which includes the desire to be ratified, understood, approved of, liked or admired. Moreover, students keep silent when they are ignorant or have psychological inhibitions. There are altogether five chapters in the thesis. The first chapter gives a research background and discusses significance of the study. Chapter two reviews literature on silence, with specific attention to silence in classroom communication context. Chapter Three describes the methodological framework and design. Chapter Four analyses conversations in classroom contexts and reveals functions and causes of student silence from aspects of intentional silence and unintentional silence. Chapter Five serves as a conclusion.