The Investigative Study On The Phenomenon Of Silence In English Major’s Class

Language input and output are undoubtedly the two essential stages in the process of language learning, the degree that we learn a language well to a great extent depends on whether the two stages can be better to implement. At present, in the English class of many universities, language input and output is suffering from some obstacles differently, classroom silence gradually prevails and has the trend of spreading.In addition, one of the important functions of English teaching is improving the students’ communicative competence. For students, if a class is always silent, they will lose the positivity and initiative for exercises, it is impossible for them to learn English well. So, it is imperative to break the classroom silence.On the basis of the Input Hypothesis and Second Language Acquisition theory, this thesis utilizes the instruments involve classroom observation, interview, and questionnaire to make a study of the phenomenon of college English major’s classroom silence. The author conducts a survey on 84 English major sophomores and interviews 6 English teachers from the ZhiXing College of Northwest Normal University. Combining descriptive study and experimental study, quantitative and qualitative analysis, this thesis makes an extensive analysis on the phenomenon of college English classroom reticence and countermeasures from both the teacher’s and students’ perspective.The major findings of the research can be summarized as follows:the college English majors’ classroom silence is a common phenomenon, and the factors that affect students’ classroom silence are students themselves, such as learning motivation, lack of confidence, personality difference, passive learning habit; teacher factors like lack of classroom activities, short wait time, improper questioning strategy; cultural factors like China’s traditional "face concept", unwillingness to show off and exam culture; environmental factors like depressing classroom atmosphere, class size. The author do her utmost to put forward some recommendations for the silent phenomenon by combing characteristics of every factor as well as teacher’s and students’ suggestions for overcoming this phenomenon. Such as creating harmonious classroom atmosphere, stimulate student’s interesting in learning; promote college student’s transformation from "implicit knowledge" to "explicit knowledge"; focus on the underachievers and introverted students, improve students’ overall breadth of participation in classroom; update the education concept, eliminate unfavorable influenced factors of traditional culture.The research aims to help teachers comprehensively and deeply know about the causes of college English classroom reticence and form the overall impression for students’ learning characteristics. By cultivating the learners’ strategy awareness, encouraging them to choose, use more suitable learning strategies, teachers can work out an effective way to promote guidance for the college students. Meanwhile, the research is intended to provide guidance for the college English teachers change their teaching modes and strategies according to the students’demand. Only in this way can we break the silence, activate the classroom atmosphere and realize the goal of teaching and learning successfully.