An Investigation Of The Main Factors Contirbuting To High School Students’ Silence In English Class

The phenomenon of silence in English class has been a tough problem faced by manyEnglish teachers. In class interaction, there are always silent students. Students’ silence cannot only hinder the normal process of teaching, but also hamper students’improvement of oralproficiency and communicative competence, which brings many negative effects on teaching.How to solve the problem of students’ silence in class? First we should find out the mainfactors of silence, only in this way can we “suit the remedy to the case”.Through the review of literature, it can be seen that literature analysis method andquantitative research method are more adopted for the study of the main factors of silence inclass at home and abroad. Although the research results give the author much enlightenment,it doesn’t completely solve the author’s confusion. Firstly, some students’ silence in class ishighly dependent on context, and therefore, the main factors of students’ silence in class mustbe related with the specific communicative situations. Secondly, the study on the main factorsof students’ silence in class abroad are mostly conducted in intercultural class environment,and the study on the main factors of students’ silence in class at home uses college students asresearch subjects. Due to different class environments and different research subjects, theachievements of previous research can’t simply be used to explain the phenomenon of highschool students’ silence in English class.Therefore, some students from a high school of Changchun city are chosen to be thesubjects in this thesis. In order to investigate the main factors of high school students’ silencein English class, research methods such as classroom observations, a questionnaire andinterviews are adopted. By adopting stratified random sampling method, the author selects1class from14classes in Grade One,1class from4arts classes in Grade Two,1class from8science classes in Grade Two and1class from9science classes in Grade Three, respectively.There are4classes, totally231students participating in the investigation. In order to knowwhether there exists silence phenomenon in English class, the author carries out classroomobservations among4chosen classes. Then, a self-made questionnaire is conducted among231students. Totally231questionnaires are distributed and224valid questionnaires arecollected. The questionnaire results are statistically analyzed by percentage. Then50studentsare randomly chosen from231students for separate interviews to probe into the main factorsof high school students’ silence in English classes. Finally the interview materials areanalyzed. That is, the content relevant to the main factors of high school students’ silence inEnglish class are extracted from students’ replies, the main factors with the same theme are categorized into one group, and the number of subjects that choose every different theme iscalculated and statistically analyzed by percentage.Classroom observation results indicate that there exists the phenomenon of silence inhigh school English class, and it is comparatively serious. The results of interviews andquestionnaire show that the main factors of high school students’ silence in English classinclude: the consciousness of face, the influence of teaching modes, teachers’ inappropriatefeedback, the relationship between teachers and students, the influence of students’ Englishlearning motivations, the influence of anxiety, the negative self-concept, the influence ofpersonality, the limitation of language competence, the influence of academic records，Learned Helplessness，emotional impact, physiological fatigue, the absence or presence of theopposite sex, the degree of familiarity with the other speakers, the partners’ fluency in spokenEnglish, the comparison with other students, lack of other students’ support, the influence ofclass atmosphere and the large number of students in one classroom.Through the analysis of the main factors of high school students’ silence in English class,the following conclusions can be drawn:1. Some students’ silence in English class is caused by some single factor. For example, abad mood directly leads to his (her) silence.2. Most students’ silence in English class are due to the combined effects of differentfactors. Some factors are continuous and stable, while other factors will disappear with thechange of the specific situation.3. Contextual factors are highlighted. Compared with the previous researches, contextualfactors play a very important role in the formation of students’ silence in English class in thisinvestigation. Contextual factors include: emotional impact, physiological fatigue, the absenceor presence of the opposite sex, the degree of familiarity with other speakers and so on.Silence caused by contextual factors won’t last, and it will better or disappear with the changeof contextual factors.4. Compared with the previous researches, peer effects on the formation of students’silence in English class can not be neglected in this investigation. This shows that high schoolstudents like to compare and imitate each other, whose influence on silence in class can not beignored.5. Compared with the previous research, the traditional “views on silence” does notmake a big impact on student’s silence in class in this investigation. It can be seen from theresults that the traditional concept “views on silence” are changing over time.Through classroom observation, a questionnaire and interviews to investigate the mainfactors contributing to silence in high school English class, the following conclusions can bedrawn:1. Through classroom observation, the real situation of interaction in high school English class can be seen clearly and we can also get a specific and intuitionistic view on thephenomenon of silence in high school English class. However, the results of the observationwill be unavoidably influenced by the observer’s subjective consciousness.2. Through a questionnaire to investigate the main factors contributing to silence in highschool English class，a larger range of the research subjects can be covered and largequantities of information can be collected. Besides，the main factors contributing to silence inhigh school English class can be obtained by the relatively easy quantified disposal of thequestionnaires.3. Through face to face interviews, we can flexibly and directly probe into the mainfactors of high school students’ silence in English class. And the information received is realand reliable. However，due to labor and time limitation, investigating the main factorscontributing to high school English class through interviews can make the coverage and thenumbers of research subjects limited.