Exploring The Classroom Silence On College English Majors In Intensive Reading Classes

The educational reform has gradually changed from the teacher-centered teaching to the student-centered modern teaching.In student-centered classrooms,classroom interaction,that is,the input and output of language,has become an essential factor for the successful teaching.However,the actual situation of students' interaction is not optimistic.Many teachers find that it is difficult for students to really integrate into classroom teaching and to make real classroom interactions happen.Students' language output is far less than the teacher's output expectations.At present,there have been a lot of researches on classroom silence at home and abroad,but most of the studies abroad focus on theoretical research,while empirical research is relatively few.Most studies in China focus on non-English majors.In addition,there are few studies on the relationship between students with different English proficiency.The current study selected freshmen and junior English majors from Lanzhou Jiaotong University,Taiyuan Institute of Technology,Northwest Normal University,Lv Liang College and Datong University as the research samples.According to the score of TEM 4,the participants were divided into two groups: high level and low level.The data were collected by classroom silent questionnaire,classroom observation and interview.The study mainly focused on following three questions:(1)What is the current situation of English class for college English majors? To what extent do college English majors remain silent in class?(2)What are the reasons triggering students' silence in intensive reading classes?(3)What are the differences in the current situation,silent degree and reasons between students with different English proficiency in intensive reading classes? What is the correlation between classroom silence and influential factors?The study yielded the following findings:(1)Teachers in English classes adopted traditional teaching methods.The proportion of teacher's text explanation was large.Most students did not communicate with teachers.The classroom atmosphere was inactive.Students' silence was widespread and serious in college English major classes.(2)The factors such as teachers,students,culture and classroom environment led to students' silence.Students' factors included learning motivation,self-confidence,personality,English proficiency and the cognitive knowledge of participation in classes.Teachers' factors included teachers' teaching methods,questioning methods,problems' difficulty,waiting time for students' thinking and teachers' feedback.Cultural factors mainly included the influence of traditional culture and face-saving sense.Environmental factors mainly referred to the classroom learning atmosphere and the affection of others.(3)There were significant differences in the current situation,students' learning motivation,the influence of teachers' teaching methods and teachers' feedback between students with different English proficiency.Students with high English proficiency are better than those with low English proficiency on current situation in English classrooms.The students with low English proficiency were more influenced by learning motivation,teachers' teaching methods and feedback than those students with high English proficiency.The correlation between classroom silence and influential factors can be ranked as follows: students' confidence,cognition,English proficiency,personality,traditional culture,classroom environment,teachers' feedback,learning motivation,waiting time,questioning techniques and teaching methods.The results of the study provide some suggestions for how to improve English classroom interaction.First of all,teachers should be aware of the role of silence and pay attention to it in English teaching.Teachers should deliver understandings with students' performances of silence in class,change students' thinking methods in the process of teaching,and make them realize the importance of language output in second language learning.Secondly,in teaching design,it is necessary to design relevant activities to help students cultivate their confidence.Teachers should provide positive feedback and encouraging evaluations to students,so that they can realize their potentials and advantages to boost confidence.Teachers could set up a successful example to encourage students' language output in practice.It is necessary to guide students to set up a reasonable goal,to create the appropriate situation,so as to increase students' interests and positiveness of participation in the classroom activities.