A Study On Students’ Reticence Phenomenon In English Teaching From The Perspective Of Input And Output Theory

Since the 20 th century, English is gradually becoming an international language. As a significant communication instrument, it is important to improve the oral expression. In eastern Asia, notably China, however, reticence has gradually becoming a serious common phenomenon in English class. Recent trends in students’ reticence have led to a proliferation of studies that plenty of famous researchers both at home and abroad have done the research elaborately. Therefore, it is of great theoretical and practical meaning to study the potential reasons and pedagogical implications.In this thesis, two classes are chosen as target classes, which the author serves as their English teacher in her internship. Both classes are composed of students whose basic knowledge and academic levels are lower than those of sciencestudents. In addition, the classroom atmospheres are also negative relatively.Classroom observation, questionnaire and interviews are employed in this thesis to testify the reticence degree, to excavate the potential reasons and to put forward some suggestions to reticence. Furthermore, other two classes are also selected as observed classes to raise the representation of samples. Interviews are divided into three teachers’ interviews and six students’ interviews, whose participants are chosen in the target classes.The research questions contain:1. What’s the current reticence situation in English classes? 2. What are the potential reasons why reticence exists in English classes? 3. What measures can be adopted to reduce this phenomenon?The research is a combination of the qualitative research and the quantitative research involving classroom observation, questionnaire and interviews. First, the researcher chooses four classes as observed classes to investigate their performance in the reading class; then the questionnaires on students’ reticence were distributed to the respondents of two classes. And the author also had some informal and semi-structured interviews with students and teachers to make up for some missing information on the classroom observation and the questionnaire.Based on the collected data, this paper investigates the current situation and the causes of reticence phenomenon in English class for students and then comes up with suggestions accordingly. Besides the recommendations for future research are also discussed in the paper, hopefully they can be favorable to the research in the future.