An Investigation Into Students’ Silence In English Class In A Chinese Vocational College

Students’ lack of participation and keeping silent in class has led to their poor performance in English classroom. This is prevailing in Asian countries, especially in China, where students are alleged to be unwilling to get involved in class activities, answer questions or take part in the discussion with other students. Educators and researchers have made their effort to change this situation and tried many new ways of teaching to help activate the class atmosphere. Currently, different types of studies have been conducted to examine students’ silence in classroom at different levels in different schools. College students, however, are seldom selected as subjects to be investigated in this field. Therefore, this study is devoted to examining college students’ silence in English classroom.This research was carried out in Jiangxi College of Foreign Studies. The subjects in it were 105 non-English majors in Jiangxi College of Foreign Studies. All of the participants were the second-year students and most of them had studied English for more than six years. This study attempted to answer the following research questions:(1) To what extent do college students keep silent in English classes? (2) Are there prominent differences in students’ classroom silence between students with high proficiency and those with low proficiency? (3) Are there any differences in class silence between male students and female students? (4) What are the main causes that lead to college students’ silence in English classes? The research instruments used in this study were questionnaire, interview and observation. SPSS was used to analyze the related findings obtained in the study.This research has revealed that college students appear quite silent in English class and the degree of their being silent is also quite high. The results also showed that students with low English proficiency tended to be more silent than those with high English proficiency in English class. However, there was no significant difference with the regard to the degree of silence between male students and female students. Altogether, three main factors claim responsibility for students’ silence in English class, namely, the students’ factor, the teachers’ factor and the learning environment factor.On the basis of the research results, some suggestions were put forward at the end of the thesis. Firstly, teachers should pay attention to students’ affective factors in their classroom teaching. Secondly, teachers are supposed to optimize their question-asking skills to enhance students’confidence in speaking out their ideas boldly. In the third place, apart from enhancing professional competence, teachers should strengthen their artistic accomplishment to enlarge their extra knowledge and enrich the teaching contents. Last but not least, it’s important to create a harmonious and relaxing learning atmosphere for both the teachers and students.