An Empirical Study On Reticence In College English Class Based On Non-English Majors' Self-efficacy And Anxiety

A great deal of research has shown that Chinese college students are often hesitant and anxious about speaking the target language in class. Reticence is one of the dominant negative phenomena in Chinese EFL educational field. Students'low sense of self-efficacy and high anxiety has been found out to be the leading causes of their reticent performance in college English class through class observation, interview and questionnaire survey with randomly selected students. During the pilot study with nearly eighty non-English majors as the subjects, there is only one student who doesn't think he is in the habit of keeping silent in English class. The rest of them admit their reticence mainly because of low self-efficacy and high anxiety. So the study on reticence of non-English majors at the university level has a lot of significance in Chinese EFL context. The study will testify the following hypotheses:(1) Chinese college students in EFL context experience reticence in oral English classrooms to a great extent.(2) College students'different performances of reticence in English class are mainly caused by lack of self-efficacy and high anxiety in English learning.(3) There exist the significant correlations between students'reticence and self-efficacy as well as anxiety in English class.(4) There exists the close interrelationship between self-efficacy and anxiety in English learning.(5) The application of oral activities based on Task-based Approach will be able to effectively enhance students'self-efficacy and reduce their anxiety.(6) College students'reticent performance in English class can be lessened by enhancing students'self-efficacy and lowering their anxiety.The thesis aims to eliminate at best or at least lessen the phenomenon of students'reticence to some degree in English class by studying the level of students'reticence, self-efficacy and anxiety, the influences of self-efficacy and anxiety on students'reticence in Chinese EFL context in details, and how to implement the elaborately designed task-based oral activities based on textbooks to reduce students'reticence through enhancing their self-efficacy and lowering their anxiety so that active participation can be obviously observed among most students in Chinese EFL context.After the one-semester task-based oral activities, the students in the experimental class have obviously reduced their reticent performances based on their increasingly higher sense of self-efficacy and gradually lowering anxiety in English class. The empirical study has shown us that reticence in EFL educational field can be effectively lessened through the elaborately designed classroom task-based oral English activities by increasing students'self-efficacy and lowering their anxiety.