An Investigation Into English Classroom Environment Of Senior High School From The Perspective Of The Students’ Perception

The classroom environments including the psychological,social,cultural,and physical environments in which learning takes place have impacts on the students’ motivation and learning results.Despite the fact that the research on classroom environments has thrived in many countries,schools,and disciplines for decades,the perception of English classroom environment(ECE)research is still in its infancy.Considering students are the primary stakeholders in the educational process,it stands to reason that their perspectives are valuable to educators.The purpose of this research aims to explore the high school students’ perception on English classroom environments.Therefore,it aims to answer the following questions: 1.What is the general situation of the senior high school students’ perception of the actual English classroom environment and the ideal English classroom environment? 2.What are the differences between the perception of the actual English classroom environment and the perception of the ideal English classroom environment for high school students? 3.Are there any differences between the high school students’ perception of the actual English classroom environment and the ideal English classroom environment in terms of gender and grade? If so,what are the differences?This research adopts the research method combining quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis through a questionnaire survey and interview respectively.313 high school students from Qujing High School filled out the questionnaire.In this study,SPSS 25.0 statistical software was used for item analysis,frequency analysis,descriptive analysis,independent sample T test,paired sample T test and one-way ANOVA.At the same time,this study conducted a semi-structured interview with 9students by telephone,which was used as a corpus for qualitative analysis.After the interview,this study classified the interview contents according to the dimensions and carried out content analysis.Through the analysis of the questionnaire data,the following conclusions are drawn: 1.The overall actual ECE perception of high school students is at a high level,but there is still a gap compared with the ideal ECE.2.There are significant differences between the students’ perception of the actual ECE and the ideal ECE from the perspectives of task orientation,teacher support,class order,student affinity,and collaboration.3.In terms of gender,the male students were more satisfied with their actual classroom environment than the female ones.The statistically significant differences between the male students’ and the female students’ perception only exist on the scales of task orientation both in the actual ECE and the ideal ECE.In the aspect of grade,the gap between the actual and the ideal ECE perception of the Grade3 students is the biggest.Also,Grade 2 students perceive their actual ECE more favorably than those in Grade 1 and Grade 3.And Grade 2 students have higher expectations and requirements for English classroom environments than Grade 1 and Grade 3.On account of the above research results,some specific countermeasures on how to enhance the English classroom environments are proposed.This research is of practical value in providing a theoretical basis for education practice.The results of this research may help prompt school administrators and teachers to pay attention to the differences between the real classroom and students’ ideal classroom.Consequently,the findings of this research will help English teachers,school administrators and curriculum designers to develop some useful strategies to improve the classroom environments and make them more suitable for English learning in senior high schools.As such,this research has enriched the research on classroom environments because it has extended earlier work to further the understanding of the Chinese high school students’ perception on the five dimensions of English classroom environments: student affinity,teacher support,class order,task orientation,and collaboration.Though there are limitations in this research,it hopes to provide some inspiration for future research on the students’ perception on English classroom environments.