A Survey On Senior High School Students’ Perceptions Of English Classroom Environment

Language learning only takes place in certain environments, and classroom environment is one of the factors influencing students’ achievement and classroom performance. As Houston and Fraser pointed out, “Students’ classroom environment perceptions can provide useful criteria for evaluating educational alternatives.”(Houstan, Fraser & Ledbetter, 2008). In recent decades, researches on classroom environment become one of the hot issues in the educational field.This paper investigates 266 Senior Two students’ perceptions of English classroom environment—randomly selected from five classes of the same senior high school, and links classroom environment with their test achievement and classroom participation with two inventories, Middle School English Classroom Environment Inventory(MSECEI) for investigating the English classroom environment in senior high school and Classroom Participation Inventory(CPI) to test students’ classroom participation. MSECEI is developed by Liu Liyan and Liu Yongbin(2010) with five scales, twenty-five items, used to investigate mainland middle school students’ English classroom environment perceptions. And the second inventory CPI is modified from Hayes’ Classroom Behavior Inventory(CBI)(Elisabeth Hayes, 1992),by choosing one scale(Verbal Participation) to test students’ classroom participation,with only 7 items in all.According to the analyzed quantitative and qualitative data, five major findings will be presented and discussed in this paper. Firstly, senior high school students are generally satisfied with the existing English classroom environment. Then, significant differences exist between females’ and males’ perceptions of English classroom environment in senior high school, and girls’ environment perceptions are significantly more favorable than boys’ on the whole and on three out of the five scales. Thirdly, there is a big gap and significant mismatch between the actual and ideal English classroom environment in senior high school. And a positive and significant correlation exists between the total mean score of senior high school students’ classroom environment perceptions and their academic achievement. Finally,senior high school students’ perceptions of their English classroom environment are significantly related with their classroom participation, and the scale Task Orientationis a useful predictor variable for students’ classroom participation.The results found in this paper can help teachers and researchers get a more scientific evaluation about students’ classroom environment perceptions in senior high school. Several teaching implications are also provided for English teachers to make proper adjustments of their teaching methods, with the purpose of improving the standard of English teaching and students’ English learning.