On Silence Of Non-English Majors In College English Classroom

Silence, as an important way of non-verbal human communication, is extremely common in our daily communication. However, people simply define it as "the absence of speech and communication". To a certain extent, due to this superficial understanding, the function of silence as an important branch of linguistic studies has been ignored. Actually, in the process of communication, silence not only can deliver a wealth of information, but also perform certain communicative functions. This is also true to classroom silence. Among the limited studies on the phenomenon of silence, the researches on English classroom silence are extremely rare. This thesis focuses on the study about classroom silence of non-English majors.The students’active participation in English classroom activities and interaction with teachers are indispensable parts of a successful and efficient English class. In the actual English class in China, students seldom actively participate in classroom activities or speak English, and most students usually choose the way of keeping silent to respond teachers’ questions. Students’ negative response can frustrate teachers’ enthusiasm and passion in teaching, and the classroom atmosphere will be dull. As a result, the achievements of teaching will be severely influenced. However, active interaction between students and teachers can be helpful to arouse students’ interests and enthusiasm in English learning, and improve students’ ability in practical use of the target language. Thus the students’ willingness to answer questions and communicate in English will be enhanced. In such way, the effectiveness of students’ learning and the efficiency of teachers’ teaching will be improved. Therefore, it is both necessary and meaningful to explore the reasons for the silence in College English classroom and find corresponding countermeasures to overcome this phenomenon.In terms of English teaching in China, many people use the phrases like "high scores with poor English ability, dumb English, inefficient and time-consuming" to complain about or describe the current status and big problems of English teaching. Many college students can pass the CET 4 or CET 6, which can show that they have got some abilities of English application. But after graduation, when they are required to communicate in English during practical working, most of them are unable to express themselves correctly or completely. This consequence is closely related to their English education received at schools. Since they usually remain silent in class, hardly speak in English or take an active part in English communication, their practical ability in language application and spoken English are difficult to improve.What is the current status of silence in college English classroom? What are the reasons for college students’silence in English classroom? What measures can be taken to strengthen the students willingness of active participation and speaking in classroom activities? This thesis is going to study the above three questions by combining the knowledge of related sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and pedagogics with scientific statistical research methods.Through classroom observation and questionnaire, this research tries to investigate and analyze the current status of college students’silence in English class, and find out the internal and external factors, and finally propose some possible solutions based on the reasons. This research takes the 202 freshmen of non-English majors in Yangtze University as the subjects. The results and discussions show that the phenomenon of students’English classroom silence is common and three types of factors greatly influence the English classroom silence:the factors from students themselves, the factors from teachers and factors from educational environment. Firstly, the student’s learning motivation, language proficiency, confidence and anxiety can affect students’ classroom participation; Secondly, the teachers’ teaching methods, questioning strategies and feedback, and relationship with students also can affect the English classroom silence; Finally, the traditional Chinese culture and teaching philosophy, English classroom atmosphere, and the current evaluation system are also closely related to the phenomenon.Based on the findings, the author also puts forward some countermeasures. From the students’ part, they should strengthen the learning motivation, improve their English proficiency, enhance confidence and reduce anxiety; from the perspective of teachers, they should improve classroom questioning strategies, feedback strategies, and establish friendly and harmonious relationship with students; from the part of educational environment, relaxed and active atmosphere of classroom and diversified English evaluation system are also very necessary.In conclusion, this study will systematically analyze the current situation, the reasons, and the corresponding countermeasures of English classroom silence. This research has done some complementary work to the previous researches in this area. The author also shares some opinions and recommendations for further study of this topic with the expectation of being helpful to future researches.