A Survey Study Of English Classroom Environment In Junior High School

Learning always occurs in some certain environments, among which classroom environment has the most direct and closest connection with students’learning. Classroom environment has received much attention from researchers both at home and abroad since1930s. Many studies on classroom environment show that it has a close relationship with students’ learning behavior and learning achievement, but few studies at home focus on the English learning environment in Junior High School. To fill up this gap, this study aims to explore the actual apperceived and the ideal English classroom environment from the Junior High School students’ point of view and explore a better way to organize a better English class for the students by comparing the two. The specific research questions are as the follows:1) What is Junior High School students’ perception of the actual English classroom environment?2) What are Junior High School students’ expectations for the ideal English classroom environment?3) What are the differences between the students’ perception of the actual English classroom environment and their ideal English classroom environment?To answer those questions, both quantitative and qualitative researches are adopted. In the quantitative research, a questionnaire designed by Liu Liyan and Liu Yongbing (2010) is used, which includes five scales and twenty five items. The questionnaire is administered in November,2012to239Grade One and Grade Two students from Xinhua Middle School and Cuigang Middle School in Yangzhou and finally all the questionnaires are collected with164found valid. The data are analyzed with SPSS16.0.The qualitative research covers semi-structured interviews with8students from four different classes who have taken part in the previous questionnaire survey and classroom observations in two classes of Xinhua Middle School. The classroom observations are made on normal English classes. The information collected from the interviews and observations are synthesized and categorized for further analysis.Detailed analysis of quantitative and qualitative survey results yields the following findings:Firstly, generally speaking, Junior High School students are satisfied with their actual English classroom environment as they perceive all the scales in the classroom environment as favorable. The statistical results suggest that students are most satisfied with Teacher Support and least satisfied with Student Cohesiveness among those scales. A comparative study within the actual English classroom environment shows that no significant differences exist between male and female students’ perception of the actual English classroom environment, but the latter have a more positive perception than the former. However, students of high English proficiency are found to have significant higher satisfaction with the actual classroom environment than students of low English proficiency. Besides, there exists a positive and significant correlation between students’perception of the actual classroom environment and their English proficiency.Secondly, students have very high expectations for their ideal English classroom environment, for the mean values of all the scales approach5.00. Among them, there are three scales whose mean values exceed the total mean value (Mean=4.94):Class Order, Teacher Support and Task Orientation. The results indicate that students expect a well-organized English class in which teachers can provide sufficient support and students themselves can focus on their learning.Thirdly, there exists a wide gap between the actual and the ideal classroom environment and students prefer a much more favorable classroom environment than the actual one. The mean scores of all the five scales of the actual classroom environment are lower than the ideal classroom environment, and the differences are found to be quite significant (p=.000). The biggest discrepancy exists in the scale of Student Cohesiveness.Based on the discussions of the above findings, some suggestions are proposed for the English teachers on how to optimize the present English classroom environment:Firstly, teachers should try to build a more cooperative English class. They should create more opportunities for the students to cooperate with each other and develop their cooperative skills by organizing more group work or pair work in class. Besides, teachers should encourage students of different English proficiencies to be involved in the cooperation. Secondly, English teachers should enhance the students’ awareness of task orientation in class. They should state the arrangement and learning tasks and aims of each class clearly to the students so that they can finish their tasks by following the instructions. Thirdly, more teacher support is desired in English class. To offer more help and support to students, English teachers should have sufficient and efficient communication with the students to know their needs and make proper adjustment according to the students’ feedback.