An Investigation Into Students’ Reticence Phenomenon In English Classes In Junior High School

According to the Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standard(2011),students’ subject status in the classroom should be paid attention to,and their autonomous learning ability and comprehensive language application ability should be raised.However,in the actual teaching process,most junior high school students remain reticent in the English classroom.This not only affects the classroom teaching effect of teachers,but also affects the improvement of students’ oral and communicative abilities.In order to help junior high school students overcome reticence,this investigation takes junior high school students as the research subject.The current situation and causes of classroom reticence are investigated,and targeted suggestions are put forward.The thesis attempts to answer the following two research questions:Question 1: What is the current situation of junior high school students’ reticence in English classes?Question 2: What are the main reasons leading to students’ reticence in English class?What countermeasures can be taken to change the present situation of students’ reticence in English classes?The investigation lasts four months,and 297 students and 8 teachers from six classes in Grade Two in Fuxin No.11 Middle School in Fuxin City,Liaoning Province are selected as the subjects.Firstly,classroom observation,interviews,and questionnaires are adopted to investigate classroom reticence of junior high school students.Secondly,12 lessons including vocabulary,grammar,writing,reading,listening,and speaking are observed and recorded.Eight students and eight teachers are interviewed.Thirdly,297 students are surveyed by questionnaires.Finally,SPSS is used to analyze the questionnaire data.The results show that,first,the phenomenon of reticence in junior high school English classrooms is widespread.Second,Chinese culture,classroom environment,students’ personality,learning ability,learning motivation,learning habits,teacher-student relationship,teaching method,questioning method and feedback are the main reasons for the reticence of junior high school students.Based on the findings above,overcoming classroom reticence requires teachers and students to work together.From the aspect of teachers,teacher-student relationships,teaching methods,questioning strategies,and feedback need to be improved.In terms of students,their own personality needs to be cultivated.Learning ability needs to be improved.Learning habits and learning motivations need to be changed.As a result,their self-learning ability and comprehensive language application ability are developed.