A Case Study On Silence In EFL Classrooms Of Chinese Senior High Schools

This study is a case study that focuses on the students’ silence in the EFL classrooms of senior high school in China. It employed the instruments of classroom observation, surveys and interviews to explore the following three questions:(1) To what extent does classroom silence occur in EFL classrooms of high schools in China?(2) To what extent do teachers and students differ in their perceived reasons of classroom silence?(3) How do the differences in perceived reasons of classroom silence reflect the teachers’and students’ perceptions of classroom silence?The research was done in a key high school in Beijing during the first three months of a new semester.125students of Grade11from three classes and their English teachers participated into the study. The research was divided into three phases. In the first phase, the researcher observed four lessons of each of the three classes with the Classroom Observation Scheme and took notes on what was happening in class. In the second phase, the English teachers of the three classes were interviewed. The semi-structured interview aimed at eliciting the teachers’ opinions about the overall level of silence in their classes and the causes of students’ silence in EFL classrooms. In the third phase, all the students were invited to do a survey which aimed at eliciting students’explanations for their silence.Major findings of the study are as the following:(1) Learner silence largely existed in EFL classrooms of high schools in China. Students in these three classes had very little verbal involvement. Most of them, including students at varied English proficiency levels, were silent for the most time in class. Seldom did any student take the initiate to ask questions or make comments or answer a question individually. The most observed situations were teacher keep talking, or teachers’questions being met with silence. (2) There are both similarities and differences in teachers’ and students’ perceived reasons of silence in EFL classrooms. They both believed that such factors as students’personalities, students’low English proficiency, the impact of Chinese culture on students’ beliefs are to blame. Students also tend to attribute their silence to many instructor factors including uneven allocation of turns, insufficient wait time and incomprehensible input. However, interviews with these three teachers indicated that they were not so clearly aware of these aspects. Although a teacher also mentioned that students were not allowed enough time to think over a question and that teachers tended to nominate students of higher proficiency, he ascribed teachers’ such doings to the pressure of dealing with exams and concluded that the education system of China was to blame. Besides, the teachers were also unaware that some students were reticent in their class because of the teacher-student relationship.(3) There are some differences in the teachers’and students’perceptions of silence in EFL classrooms. It seemed that teachers tended to interpret classroom silence negatively. They regarded the silence in class as a sign of students’reticence and unwillingness or disability to cooperate with the teacher in class. In their opinion, students’silence in class equals to inactive participation into the class, which they believed would inhibit the students from effective learning and which should be prevented. On the contrary, some students tended to interpret classroom silence positively. These students took being silent in class as an effective strategy of learning. In their mind, sometimes being silent was a better way to learn English. Meanwhile, some students consider being silent as a way of showing respect to the teachers’ authority.