英语课堂沉默现象研究大学本科毕业论文

Acknowledgments

I am grateful in the first place to my supervisor Professor Wang Yun, who has supported me all the time during the process of writing this paper. I appreciate her patience and cautiousness. I would not have accomplished this thesis successfully without her consistent help.

What’s more, I would like to acknowledge my school-Suzhou University of Science and Technology for granting me the precious chance to further my English study．In my process of writing and completing this paper，I have benefited a lot from the people around me. I want to thank you for the sterling help of my friends. Besides I want to thank the authors of books and papers that provide me with plenty of information and references.

Last but not least, I will give my gratitude to my family members, who have supported and encouraged me all the time.

摘要

随着英语课程改革，将学生作为课堂核心这一要求的提出，使得越来越多的教育学者关注英语课堂学生沉默现象。然而国内在这方面的许多研究停留在理论方面,而缺少实证方面的深入研究。因此，在相关理论研究的基础上，本研究以苏州科技学院英语专业的学生为研究对象，将问卷调查和课堂观察的方式结合，从学生角度进行调查，以实证为依据，探究导致英语课堂学生沉默的原因和解决方法。

通过研究，我们发现造成英语课堂沉默现象的原因不仅在于老师的教学方式、态度以及学生的态度、个性、动机等方面，同时还会受到其他因素的影响，这些因素已经变成提高英语课堂效率的阻碍因素，甚至还会造成更大程度、更广范围的恶性循环。因此，解决课堂沉默问题是很必要的，不仅需要从师生双方探究原因，还要联系实际，最终打破沉默坚冰，构建和谐高效的英语课堂。

关键词：英语课堂；学生沉默现象；课堂参与；实证调查

Abstract

According to the New College English Curriculum Requirements(2007:25), the student-oriented pattern has become the focus of classroom reform. More and more education workers shift their attention to the phenomenon of students’silence in EFL classroom. However, most of the research in this area focuses on theories and lacks deep studies from the empirical perspective. So, based on relevant theoretical research, this study takes students of Suzhou University of Science and Technology as our objectives and adopts a questionnaire to explore the factors causing students’ silence in EFL classroom.

Results of the study demonstrate that the reasons of students’ silence are not limited to teaching methodology, attitude on teachers’side and attitude, personality, motivation on students’side. There are also other related factors, which obstruct the efficiency in EFL classroom, and even can lead to a vicious cycle. Therefore, it is really critical to solve the problem. The exploration should be made from both sides of teachers and students, thus to break the ice of silence and create a harmonious and high-efficient EFL classroom.

Key words：EFL classroom; students’ silence; class engagement; empirical investigation

Contents

Introduction (1)

1. Theoretical background and literature review (2)

1.1 The definition of silence (2)

1.2 The characteristics of silence (2)

1.2.1 Positive silence (3)

1.2.2 Negative silence (3)

1.3 Classification of silence (4)

1.4 Relationship between silence and speech (5)

1.5 The current situation of silence study at home and abroad (6)

1.5.1 Studies at home (6)

1.5.2 Studies at abroad (7)

2. An empirical study of students’ silence in EFL classroom (8)

2.1 Research questions (8)

2.2 Research methodology (9)

2.2.1 Research subjects (9)

2.2.2 Research materials (9)

2.2.3 Research procedure (9)

2.3 Data collection and analysis (10)

2.3.1 Data collection (10)

2.3.2 Data analysis (10)

2.4 The findings (11)

2.4.1 Teachers’ aspects (11)

2.4.2 Students’ aspects (12)

2.4.3 Other aspects (12)

3. Some implications and suggestions for students and teachers (13)

3.1 For students (13)

3.2 For teachers (14)

Conclusion (15)

References (17)

Appendix1: (19)

Appendix2: (21)

Students’ Silence in EFL Classroom

Introduction

In recent years, the phenomenon of students’silence has attracted researchers’attention. Most of them have studied the factors that influence students’ participation, such as teachers’ talk in ELF class, teachers’ questioning methods, etc, but few researches have explored from students’psychological perspective which is actually far more worthy of investigation.

Due to the new requirements of College English Requirements (2007:25), the pedagogical tendency in EFL class emphasizes on students’roles and aims to create a student-centered teaching environment. Thus, many teachers have introduced various means to encourage students’participation. It provides students with more opportunities but also much pressure. Students may employ silence as the form of communicative engagement and only a small proportion of students actively participate in class. On the other hand, many teachers consider silence as the opposite action or even the enemy of speech and few teachers have taken proper measures to resolve the problem. The misunderstanding or incomplete understanding of silence may lead to a vicious circle in ELF class.

Meyer (Kevin 2009:16) put forward the conception of Hypothesized Link between Silence and Learning. Furthermore, she defined silent engagement as a kind of communication. On this theoretical basis, more and more researchers divert their attention to the value of silence and explore the relationship between speech and silence in ELF class. The causes of students’ silence in ELF class are multidimensional due to different research angles and purpose.

In fact, silence has both negative and positive sides. As Dauenhauer (1980) claimed that “silence in its own right can be seen to make a positive contribution to the scope of the meaningful” (1980:104) Silence paves the way for the potency of language since silence gives both birth and conclusion to speech.

This thesis will be done on the basis of the previous studies related to the philosophy of speech and silence, factors influencing student participation and learning styles. In order to make the research have more practical significances, a series of surveys will be done with the form of questionnaires. The data will be collected to analyze the theories and hopefully some of them can be put into practice and help to put forward some suggestions in future teaching in ELF class.

1. Theoretical background and literature review

Silence is a means of powerful nonverbal communication, however to interpret silence in the most proper way, various connected aspects should be considered, including subjective and objective factors. The subjective factors include the feelings, personality, mutual relations and the degree of caring, while the objective factors are location, time, culture background etc. To dig out the root causes of students’ silence in EFL class, close attention should first be paid on the definition of silence.

1.1 The definition of silence

According to different purposes with various research frameworks, the definition of silence distinguishes from one and another.

Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary (Hornsby 2009:1408) defines silence as the following meanings: (1) complete absence of sound or noise; quiet; (2) refusal or failure to discuss something or answer questions about something;(3) complete quiet because nobody is talking; (4) a period of time in which everyone stops talking as a sign of respect and honor towards someone who has died; (5) failure to write a letter to someone, telephone them etc. Obviously, we must consider the actual situation to explain the proper meaning of silence.

In Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics: A Handbook for Language Teaching (Johnson & H 2003: 287-288), the notion of silence in communication is, as the case of speech, rule-governed, and it is also variable and cultural specific.

To have a better understanding and conductive study, Bruneau (1973:36) defined silence in three forms: Psycholinguistic silence; Interactive silence and Socio-cultural silence. Considering the human communication functions, every type has its particular definition.

As this paper aims to study students’ silence in EFL classroom, the definition of the interactive silences will be the core part. Interactive silence is the pausal interruption in dialogue, conversation, discussion, debate, etc. They can be related to affective, interpersonal relationships between people as well as to the exchange of information and/or problem solving (Bruneau 1973:29).

1.2 The characteristics of silence

If the ambiguous aspects of silence may be concluded clearly, further studies in this area can be made more smoothly. In high-context culture, silence usually indicates positive

meaning, and it is a special way to communicate. However, in low-context culture, silence is negative for the most part, and it is considered as a lack of communication. Jensen (1973:120-124) notes five different functions performed by silence. They are affecting, revelation, linkage, activating and judgmental. Basically, silence can be divided into two parts: positive silence and negative silence.

1.2.1 Positive silence

Silence can affect people. In some embarrassing situation, silence offer people some time for reflection and buffering. Nonverbal language can express the deepest fears and most intense joys. Silence can be understood as respect, acceptance or kindness in church or library .To sum up, silence, to some degrees, is the language of those strong passions: love, anger, surprise or fear. Silence is a common strategy to manage tense situations, especially for highly emotional people, who try to avoid using some improper words or exposing their ignorance.

Silence has revelation function. It may impart some information while preventing the disclosure of other (Jensen 1973:120). We can find clear implication in some situations. For example, silence can work as the conveyor of message in class, when students think about the answers to questions, the teacher often choose to be silent. Although the overall language environment is silent, students’ minds keep going on. We can call it revelation silence in this case.

In some cases, a kind of silence is called “linkage silence”.In the social culture, silence can act as a bond among people. This kind of silence is positive as is used to maintain social space or prevent interruption. Such as the situation that two strangers in elevators or crowded buses usually keep silent. This could also happen among intimate friends. They keep silent because they understand each other so well and there is no need putting thoughts into words.

Silence can lead to an assumption of assent and agreement with what has been said. The old sayings “silence is consent” expresses such meaning. To some degrees, silence can give us some hints from peoples’ response and help us make our judgment.

1.2.2 Negative silence

Silence can represent some negative feelings, such as hostility, defiance, coldness, scorn, or even hate.

Silence can represent dishonesty and lying. We all know at court, the jury and lawyer’s interpretation of the hesitant witness is often negative if they keep silent.

Silence can communicate an attitude of thoughtfulness and consideration or an

absence of thought or opinion (Jensen 1973:123).Silence has an activating function in EFL classroom. In traditional teaching pattern, the teacher plays the role as the center of class and dominates the teaching procedure, while the students are silent listeners or readers lacking of their own thoughts. With the promotion of new College English Curriculum Requirements, modern classrooms require students to play the major roles. Interactive class sh ould be teachers’ silence more than those of students. Teachers should change their authoritative roles and create students-centered classroom settings.

Silence can also be interpreted as disagreement and resentment (Jensen 1973:121). Besides this, silence also stands for dissent, or reservation and potential action. It will hinder the fluent communication.

According to what has analyzed above, it can be concluded that “silence can perform a number of highly significant communicative functions”(Jensen 1973). However, the exactly meaning of silence should be embedded in the context. In other words, silence functions either positively or negatively, which should depend on the concrete context. What’s more, positive silence can transfer into negative silence in EFL class if the teachers failure to stimulate the students in correct direction.

1.3 Classification of silence

(1) Bruneau’s classification of silence.

Silence is to speech as the white of this paper to this print (Bruneau 1973:18). To have further study on silence, Bruneau summarizes three forms of silence as following:

(a)Interactive silences.

Interactive silence is the interruption in dialogue, conversation, discussion, debate, etc. They can be related to affective, interpersonal relationships between people as well as to the exchange of information and/or problem solving (Bruneau 1973:29). Compared with psycholinguistic, slow-time silences, interactive silences are longer. People can have second thoughts and make inferences, judgments and affective decisions in interactive silences. In class context, the typical examples of interactive silences are interactions between teachers and students. After putting forward a question, teachers may keep silence while students are thinking about the given questions. When teachers are teaching theoretical knowledge, students keep silent throughout the process.

(b)Psycholinguistic silence.

In a speech, hesitations often appear. In fact the hesitations in the speech are forms of silence. On the temporal sequence of speech, both encoders and decoders create necessary

and variable impositions of slow-time. Decoders intend to create mind-time (slow-time silence) for the decoding process.

(c)Socio-cultural silences.

Socio-cultural silence are those related to the characteristic manner in which entire social and cultural orders refrain from speech and manipulate both psycholinguistic and interactive silences (Bruneau 1973:36). When a teacher enters the classroom, students may turn to be silent immediately .The silence speaks, “We recognize and acknowledge your position by our silence.” Thus, teachers operate with discipline codes. S o it suggests that people use silence to show respectful acceptance for a social status. Silence is the expected response in many places, objects and events, such as Churches, courtrooms, libraries, hospitals, schools, funeral, battle sites, etc.

(2) Kurzon’s classification of silence

W ith the adoption of Grice’s distinction between natural and non-natural meaning, Kurzon (1995:35-41) classifies silence into two categories as intentional and unintentional silence. Intentional silence refers to silence intentionally used as a strategy, while the unintentional silence is caused unintentionally, because of extreme anxiety, embarrassment or panic (Kurzon 1995:42).

Kurzon(1992:37) gave 3 modal interpretations of silence:

Internal (willingness): I will/ shall not speak.

1) Intentional:

External: I must/ may not speak.

2) Unintentional: “I cannot speak” or “I am not able to speak”.

The intentional silence is internal for the silent person that means the speakers decide not to voice by themselves. On the other hand, external silence with the meaning of “I must/may not speak” implies an external reason that forces the person n ot to voice.

Unintentional silence is supposed to be explained as “I cannot speak” or “I am not able to speak”, which can be resulted from psychological inhibitions that may prevent students from speaking out their ideas in class.

1.4 Relationship between silence and speech

In order to expand the framework for students’participation and have better understanding on how students perceive and approach learning in EFL class, the comparative analysis should be made between binary thinking about the speech and silence in EFL class and the existing philosophical literature on the relationship between speech

and silence.

Some creative works on speech and silence outline fundamental philosophical thoughts about the important role that silence plays in communication. Silence, like speech, can function as a means through which meaning and knowledge are constructed (Acheson 2008b). Thus, rather than regarding silence negatively as the absence of speech, silence ought to be recognized as an embodied and active, not passive, gesture (Acheson 2008a). In fact, silences can serve communicative functions (Acheson 2008a&2008b) The relationship between silence and speech doesn’t completely opposite to each other, instead, it is far more complex and complicated because silence is intertwined with discourse. Just as Jaworski (1993:34) noted, “silence and speech do not stand in total opposition to each other, but form a continuum of forms ranging from the most prototypical instances of silence to the most prototypical instances of speech” According to the argument from Jaworski(1993:17) that regarding silence only as a background to speech would be a drastic oversimplification. “Silence and speech are two intersecting and equally relevant communication categories”

The other perspective is that speech and silence form a dialectical relationship with one another. Clair (1998: xiii) argued that silence and voice “should be thought of less as bifurcated concepts and more as self-contained opposites”. She explained, “Silent practices are pervasive and interwoven with linguistic practices” (1998:20) More specifically, “silence and discourse are bound up in innumerable ways. Their many nuanced meanings and functions are woven together into a complex tapestry” (1998:38)

1.5 The current situation of silence study at home and abroad

1.5.1 Studies at home

Chinese students’ silence in EFL class has already drawn many Chinese language scholars’attention. The case of oversea Chinese students’silence in EFL class provides breakthrough in the study area. From the investigation of three Chinese students in American classroom, Liu (2002:38) makes an analysis on the basis of interview and observation data. She finds Asian students’ participation code is closely influenced by five major categories:

Pedagogical factors (e.g. teaching patterns, participation grading, and chances to speak up),

Cognitive factors (e.g. background knowledge, previous learning experience, or psychological readiness),

Affective factors (e.g. motivation ,anxiety, encouragement),

Linguistic factors (e.g. language proficiency, communicative capability, or accent).

Socio-cultural factors (e.g. face-saving strategies, politeness strategies concept of status and identify, personality and gender. ),

Jackson (2002:65-84) focuses on a study on the taciturnity of Chinese students from the ethnographic angle. The participants are in four sections of an English-medium undergraduate business course in Hong Kong. The research consists of observations, interviews, and videotapes. Jackson finds that students’active interaction level is determined by mixtures of affective, educational and socio-cultural factors. During the procedure of interview, several types of answers can be mainly summed up: Both male and female interviewees express that the fear of embracement counts as the main reason they remain silent. They choose to be silent when they want to avoid telling some stupid answers or exposing their ignorance in front of the whole class and teachers.

The participants also hold the view that their lacking of self-confidence stop them from speaking up, even challenging their classmates or professors.

Some traditional cultures such as the thinking of Confucian on harmony and face-saving strategies may have impacted their perception of what appropriate conduct is in class context. The second thought may lead to the loss of opportunities of participation.

GAO Gui-ling’s draws similar conclusion from her studies (2008:102-104). She explains that traditional culture affects students’ learnin g habit. Due to the traditional teaching patterns, it is quiet common for students to obey the class regulation that students just follow teachers and do not challenge authority.

LI Nai-gang (2008:243-245) does a series of survey to find out the relationship between students’ silence and politeness strategy. Silence can function as both positive and negative politeness strategy. Given the situation that students hope to be accepted, respected and admired by others, then silence acts as positive. While on the other hand, silence can be seen as a kind of negative politeness strategy. In Li’s survey he finds that students pay more attention to their own negative face rather than partner’s especially their teachers’ face. Moreover, silence is regarded as a kind of off-record strategy or be understood as “Don’t Do the FTA” strategy

1.5.2 Studies at abroad

In order to find out the reasons for students’silence, some language scholars have done much experiment with multiple perceptive.

Reda (2002) conducts the res earch on students’ silence by examining the impacting

factors of teachers and pedagogies which will lead students to decide whether to speak or to be silent in class. From the results, she finds that “small gestures” encourag e students to speak, which actually reflects the cultivation of teacher-student relationships. Teachers’questioning method and attention on feedback will produce psychological hint on students. The positive hint will promote active engagement in class.

Nakane (2005:75-100) focuses on a typical case analysis. On the basis of the former research, she explores three Japanese students in Australian university in a narrow way What she has found indicates that Japanese students’ participation is strongly influenced by immediate contextual factors , including the participant structures, main topic, and co-participants’ understanding and performances. She draws the conclusion from the Japanese students’case that silence can be co-constructed in ongoing negotiation of participation in the classroom.

Tatar (2005:284-293) makes the qualitative descriptive multi-case study of four Turkish graduate students’ classroom participation experiences. S tudents’ own perceptions are taken into account.

Tater summarizes that to non-English-speaking students, there are five dimensions of silence. Those include silence as:

(a) a means of participation;

(b) a face-saving strategy;

(c) a reaction to others’ contributions;

(d) a product of a feeling of inarticulacy;

(e) a sign of respect for authority and concern for others.

2. An empirical study of students’ silence in EFL classroom

S tudents’ silence is a common phenomenon in classroom context in university. The whole research will revolve around the factors related with students’silence. In order to make theoretical analysis more closely combined with actual situation, the means of questionnaires is employed to collect data for analyzing the factors which may impact students’ participation in EFL classroom.

2.1 Research questions

This thesis aims to investigate the causes of students’silence in EFL class and the procedure those factors affect students’ silence. There are two main questions to explore as below:

(1)What are the factors that correlate with students’ silence?

(2)How do teachers and students perceive students’ silence?

2.2 Research methodology

2.2.1 Research subjects

The research was done in Suzhou University of Science and Technology. The subjects were chosen from juniors and sophomores from English major. This research lasted from March to May of 2013 for two months. Specifically, the research subjects involved 94 students from 4 different classes. Among them were 58 females and 36 males. The participants age in the range from 20 to 22. Juniors and sophomores were selected to attend the survey considering they have adapted themselves to the university life and study and they all have at least eight years’English learning experience at school. English major students attend many English related courses and there exists much more opportunities to observe and investigate classroom interaction between teachers and students and among students.

2.2.2 Research materials

Referred to the previous studies of Meyer (2009:173-180), questionnaire was designed to provide the thesis with the results of investigation from real English teaching and learning condition. Contents and questions can refer to Appendix 1.

The questionnaire items were responded to on the Likert Scale five-point. Likert items are appropriate for measuring opinions, beliefs, and attitudes (DeVellis 2003). DeVeills (2003:159) explained that “although, strictly speaking, items using Likert or semantic differential response formats may be ordinal, a wealth of accumulated experience supports applying interval-based analytic methods to the scales they yield”.

2.2.3 Research procedure

94 participants were given questionnaire and finished in 20 minutes before class begins to ensure enough time for consideration. The questionnaire included 30 questions and all the questions were specially designed in Chinese in order to make sure the participants can comprehend and understand the meaning of every question. All questionnaires were done anonymously to collect the participants’ nature voice about the issue.

The variables in the survey aim to investigate the students’understanding of the phenomenon of silence and explore the factors which will influence students’ engagement style in EFL classroom.

2.3 Data collection and analysis

2.3.1 Data collection

There were 94 participants from 4 classes of English majors taking part in the survey. All of the questions in the questionnaire were designed as the form of clicking the proper answers simply from students’ first impression and nature response. Participants completed the questionnaires independently and students would not be influenced by each other. After collecting all the questionnaires and summing by Likert Scale, the author input all the data into the computer and made statistical procedures through the program of EXCEL.

2.3.2 Data analysis

The questionnaire consists of 30 items and the author will adopt the Likert-Scale five-point measure questionnaire data to explore the factors that influence students’performance in EFL classroom. Students are asked to click their frequency of behavior, from1 (never) to 5 (very often), or their level of agreement from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5(strongly agree)

Table 1 Likert-Scale five-point

never barely sometimes often very often

1 2 3 4 5

strongly disagree disagree neither agree or

disagree agree strongly

agree

1 2 3 4 5

The score is used to record the degree of frequency of each item and the 30 items in the questionnaire can be divided into the following categories:

Table 2 Data analysis of questionnaires

Perceptive of the item Item number Perceptive of the item Item number Students’ anxiety 13,14 Teachers’questioning

method

30

Students’ personality 15 Teachers ’attitude26,29 Students’ motivation 6,8, Teachers’ feedback28 Students’ attitude 1,2,3,4,7,19,20 Teachers’ wait-time 27 Students’ self-esteem 9,12,25 Design of task 5,16

Classroom atmosphere 23 Class structure 21,22

Class size 24 Culture factors 11,12,17,18

2.4 The findings

2.4.1 Teachers’ aspects

The results of data analysis demonstrate that students’ silence resulted from teachers’reasons may consist of four aspects: teachers’questioning method, teachers’attitude, teachers’ wait-time and teachers’ feedback.

According to the result of Question 30, 55.32% of students agree that “Teacher gives few open questions in class”. It is obvious that students’ attention and degree of interest in class can be improved and i nappropriate way of questioning partly leads to students’ silence in EFL class.

Question 26 and Question 29 focus on the perspective of teachers’ attitude in class. As to Question 26 “Te acher does know my name or student number”, in the interview with some English teachers, it can be found that most teachers admitted that they did forget students’ names in class. Because a teacher is often in charge of several classes consisting of many students, such cases cannot be avoided completely. Because of such situation, students may feel ignored or not valued by teachers, thus they choose to keep silent instead of participating actively. Due to the data of Question 29, 51.06%of students hold the opinion that teachers always call those top students to answer questions. Generally, most of the teachers make efforts to treat all the students fairly and provide them equal opportunities to engage in class. However, in real EFL classroom, it is not so practical to follow the rules. Nunan (1991:136-145) claims that teachers tend to pay attention to some particular area like the front and middle part in classroom. This can explain teachers’unintentional actions which may result in students’ silence from psychological level.

As to Question 27, this indicates the factor of teachers’ wait-time in EFL classroom.

55.32% of participants agree that “teacher offer them enough time for thinking after asking questions”. Because of the face theory, most students choose to keep silent until they make full preparations for the question and this contributes to students’ silence.

59.57% of students admitted that “Teacher often give positive feedback like encouragement or praise after answering questions”. so basically teachers’ feedback cannot account as the main cause of the phenomenon of students’ silence in EFL classroom.