A Study On Student Engagement And Its Influence Factors In English Classroom Teaching In Hubei Rural Middle School

The prominent feature of English as a subject is interaction compared with other subjects. Students' active participation is essential in teaching listening, speaking, reading, writing, etc. In other words, students' active participation in English classroom teaching is of great value. However, in rural middle schools, teachers are constantly found to play the dominant role in English classroom teaching leaving students little chance to get engaged or English classrooms are found to be bustling with activities but without effective learning. The new curriculum reform has been implemented for so long, then why would this happen? What causes students' disengagement phenomenon in English learning classroom in rural middle school? This research investigates and analyzes student engagement in English classroom teaching in rural middle school aiming at clarifying the present situation of student engagement in English classroom teaching and the condition of its influence factors. The ultimate goal is to put forward some useful suggestions to facilitate student engagement in rural middle schools.In this research, the instruments are questionnaires, interviews and classroom observation and the subjects are all from Nanlin Middle School.200 students are selected to fill in the questionnaires,6 students and 4 teachers are interviewed, and some students are randomly observed. The items of questionnaire of student engagement is made up of three categories:behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement and emotional engagement. The items of questionnaire of influence factors on student engagement consist of three categories:teacher'teaching, learning environment and parents' support. The reliability coefficient of the two questionnaires are 0.8343 and 0.8208 respectively, and the validity of the two questionnaires are both available with each factor loading being more than 0.3. This research aims to solve the following three research questions:Firstly, what's the present situation of student engagement in English classroom teaching in Hubei rural middle school?Secondly, what's the present situation of influence factors on student engagement in English classroom teaching in Hubei rural middle school?Thirdly, what's the correlation between student engagement and its influence factors in Hubei rural middle school?This research is made up of five parts. Part one is an introduction to the research background, purpose, significance and layout of study. Part two is literature review in which engagement and student engagement are defined, studies on student engagement at home and abroad are reviewed and rationale of study is explained. Part three is about methodology. Research questions, subjects, instruments and data collection are dealt with in this section. Part four analyzes and discusses the results from questionnaires, interviews and classroom observation and then summarizes the findings of the present study. Part five draws the conclusions of the present study, based on which some suggestions are put forward to facilitate student engagement in English classroom teaching in Hubei rural middle, and the limitations of this research with suggestions for future studies are pointed out.Through exploration, the major findings are:First of all, students'performance in behavioral engagement is better than students' performance in cognitive engagement, and students' performance in cognitive engagement is better than students'performance in emotional engagement. Significant difference exists between students of different grades and titles in emotional engagement, and for behavioral engagement and cognitive engagement, there is significant difference between leaders and non-leaders.Second, the present situation of teacher's teaching is better than the present situation of learning environment, and the present situation of learning environment is better than the present situation of parents' support. There is no significant difference between students of different background information in teacher's teaching, while there is significant difference between students of different grades and titles in learning environment, and significant difference also exists between leaders and non-leaders in parents'support.Lastly, student engagement and its influence factors are significantly related. In other words, teacher's teaching is the most significantly related influence factor, and emotional engagement is more significantly related to learning environment, teachers' teaching and parents' support than behavioral engagement and cognitive engagement.In the light of these findings, the author comes up with some suggestions hoping to facilitate student engagement in English classroom teaching in rural middle school. On the part of teachers:Diversify teaching activities; Establish proper teacher expectation. On the part of students:Develop self-learning and involvement abilities; Enrich learning strategies. On the part of parents:Form proper attitudes toward learning English; Strengthen parent-teacher or parent-school contacts.