Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1Research background

A good classroom participation in English class is highly expected to improvestudents’ language proficiency, but in the traditional exam-oriented education, it isnormal that students keep silent and teachers do most of the talking in class. Both ofthem focus on language points and pay little attention to classroom interaction. Teachersoften perform as the main directors and dominate the teaching process from beginning tothe end. Under such circumstance, classroom silence is a common occurrence.Saville-Troike(1985) defines classroom silence as non-verbal communication activitieswithout sounds and stable meaning, so when silence occurs, it is seen as an influentialfactor of the mutual interaction between teachers and students rather than the absence ofcommunication. Consequently, student’s classroom silence becomes one of the biggestobstacles in English teaching, and it begins to attract attention from many researchers.Over the past years, a growing number of researches have been conducted onstudents’ classroom silence at home and abroad. Researches abroad mainly focus onexploring the silent reasons from the perspective of students and teachers.Tsui(1996)collects the data from secondary school in Hong Kong and points out somefactors on classroom silence, such as students’ low perception of English, teachers’intolerance of silence and the fear of losing face. Liu & Littlewood(1996) carry out twolarge-scale surveys in Hong Kong University and argue that low confidence andinadequate experience are the major factors of classroom silence, and they add that thefear of making mistakes, low learning interest and insufficient time can also lead toclassroom silence. The teacher’s perspective includes questioning strategy, teachingfaculty, feedback and the wait-time. Some other researchers propose that teachers need toperform as facilitator and organizer instead of the dominant role in class.

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1.2Research purpose

As an indispensable part of basic education in high schools, English teachingfocuses on cultivating students’ listening and speaking abilities, so the classroomteaching process should be conducted through the interaction between teachers andstudents. However, it is still quite common that most students tend to be silent in class.Silence not only prevents students from improving their learning competence but alsorestricts teachers improving the teaching quality. So the classroom silence need studyingin depth and some effective methods should be adopted to break the silence. This paperapplies classroom observation, questionnaire and interview to investigate the presentsituation and reasons for silence, consequently, some corresponding suggestions are putforward to break the silence Based on the current research, two purposes are hoped to beachieved.Firstly, the research tries to use scientific data collection methods to find out thecurrent situation and the potential reasons for silence in senior high-school Englishclasses. Moreover, some possible solutions are also needed to break the classroomsilence.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Classroom Silence

The effective classroom teaching should be conducted through communicationbetween teachers and students. During the practical teaching process, most Englishteachers get into an awkward situation: students often look straight ahead and listen tothe teacher, but when they are expected to answer questions or participate in thediscussions, they often put down their heads quickly and keep silent. In this sense,student classroom silence is regarded as a failure of communication between teachers andstudents. When classroom silence occurs, teachers should make some changes inteaching and students are supposed to interactive with teachers and classmates moreactively and frequently in class.

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2.1.1 Definition of classroom silence

Before entering the further discussion about English classroom silence, we shouldfirst make clear what the silence means in communication. According to the OxfordEnglish dictionary, silence means the abstention from speech or utterance, the inaudiblestate and the omission of notice. Levinson(1983) states that silence is the absence ofvocalization. Saville-Troike (1985) puts forward three types of silence on the basis ofdifferent levels of social communications 1) institutionally-determined silence, whichincludes ritual, religion and hierarchical status;2) group-determined silence, whichincludes situational, normative and symbolic silences;3) individually-determined silence,which involves interactive and non-interactive silences. Phillips introduces the term“silence” into the field of communication and indicates that people avoid communicationowning to they think they will lose more by talking than by keeping silent(Phillips,1965).Above all, silence itself is a very common phenomenon and it is oftenseen as a good choice to avoid conflict or embarrassment in our communication.

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Chapter 3 Research Design ....17

3.1 Research Aims....17

3.2 Research Questions ........17

3.3Research Subjects......17

3.4 Research Instruments .....18

3.4.1 Classroom Observation .....18

3.4.2 Questionnaire ........19

3.4.3 Interview....19

3.5 Data Collection.........20

Chapter 4 Research Analysis and Suggestions.....21

4.1 The current situation of classroom silence .........21

4.2 Main reasons for English classroom silence ...... 24

4.3 Suggestions for breaking classroom silence ...... 39

Chapter 5 Conclusion....... 46

5.1Summary of the research....... 46

5.2 Limitations of the research......... 47

5.3 Recommendations for future research ......... 47

Chapter 4 Research Analysis and Suggestions

4.1 The current situation of classroom silence

About the classroom silence, the previous researches are mainly conducted among afew Asian university students by professors, thus the research results may have somelimitations. This paper takes some natural classrooms as research objects to get someauthentic information about silence. Based on the observation, classroom silence seems to be a common phenomenon inEnglish class. When the question is put forward, less than five students put up their handsto answer questions and the majority of them tend to keep silent. Some students evenwander during the lecture or secretly chat with classmates. Some findings of observationare shown as follows:The observation of teachers: The teachers like to talk with students who performactively or sit in front of the class. They play the leading role while students act asaudiences, turning a deaf ear to teachers’ questions. Teacher’s talk occupies a majority ofclass time. The students are mostly nominated to answer questions. Moreover, theteachers often concentrate on the language itself rather than real-life subjects, and someof their teaching questions are superficial or can be directly found in the context. Usually,teachers give students less than 5 seconds to think about the questions, this shows thatteachers are impatient in waiting for students’ responses. In addition, teacher’s feedbackis always automatic after receiving students’ answers, some simple words or phrases like“good” “Very good” “Ok, sit down” and “Well done” are frequently used in class. Just asSwain(1995) suggests that we learn a language for the purpose of language output, soteachers should offer more opportunities and create a favorable English learningcircumstance in class.

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Conclusion

In English class, the most frustrating phenomenon is that students often keep silentor rarely communicate with teachers or peers, especially when they are asked to answerquestions or required to participate in the teaching process. However, the essence oflanguage is for communication. Student’s silence not only hinders the smoothimplementation of the teaching, but also influences the improvement of theircommunication ability. Considering the tough situation, we first have to find the causesof silence. Through classroom observation, questionnaire and interviews, some factors ofclassroom silence can be concluded as follows:Factors concerning the teachers: teachers play an important role in classroomsilence. Teaching method, teacher’s questions, improper feedback and inadequate waittime contribute to it. All of these factors can hinder the students from performing activelyin English classes. The insufficiency of wait time (less than three seconds) results instudents abandoning continuous thinking. Teacher’s feedback is an effective way tofacilitate the teaching and encourage students to talk actively in class. If teacher’sfeedback is too simple and automatic, students may feel they gain no acknowledgementof people and refuse to answer questions or cooperate in class. The traditional teachingmethod－teachers explain the textbook and students take notes, leads to silence in class.Moreover, teachers’ questions also play an essential part in causing students’ silence.Many teachers’ questions focus on checking students’ language comprehension, ignoringthe purpose of helping students to form a good thinking habit.

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Reference (omitted)