| Communicative activities in class are of great importance to student’s foreign language learning.However,as students growing up,most of them are less interested in participating actively in these activities.And it is necessary to pay attention to the problem in rural compulsory education which is a relatively weak part of Chinese education.What’s the real situation of student engagement in English class in rural junior high school? What can be the factors that obstruct the engagement of students in English class? All these will be investigated in this research.At present,most of the researches on student engagement in classroom are centering on the higher education,while there are few centering on the situation of student engagement in English class in junior high school.Especially the relevant research on rural education is fewer.Based on the following background,this research investigates the situation of student engagement in English class in a rural junior high school,and analyzes the main factors that may obstruct the active engagement of rural junior high school student in English class.Finally it puts forward several pieces of suggestions for teachers and students to improve the active engagement of students in English class.According to the relevant studies of professor Kong Qiping(2003),student engagement in classroom teaching can be divided into 3 aspects: cognitive engagement,psychological engagement as well as behavioral engagement.The research comes up with 3 questions.(1)What’s the situation of student engagement in English class in rural junior high school?(2)What’s the relationship between student engagement in English class and their English academical records,gender,or in-class role?(3)What can be the major influencing factors on student engagement in English class?The subject of the research are 320 students and 4 teachers from a rural middle school in Shandong province.The instruments are as follows: questionnaires,class observation,quiz,and interview.The major findings are put forward:(1)On the whole,the level of student engagement in English class is low.The situation of students behavioral engagement is better than their emotional engagement,and their emotional engagement is better than cognitive engagement.(2)There is a significant difference between students of different English learning levels in their engagement in English class.And the level of student classroom engagement will improve as their English academical records increasing.Students with different in-class roles are particularly different in their behavioral engagement and emotional engagement in English class.Specifically,the level of classroom engagement of students who are class leaders are higher than those who are not.Last,no significant difference was found between different gender in the level of their classroom engagement.(3)The major factors that may influence student engagement could be student’s self-efficacy in English learning,teacher’s teaching,as well as classroom environment.In the end of the research,it puts forward several pieces of suggestions for students and teachers from the following aspects: advancing teachers’ teaching skills and concepts,improving students’ self-efficacy,etc.Hoping that it will be beneficial to improve the situation of student engagement in English class and the effectiveness of student’s English learning in rural junior high school. |
