英语课堂沉默现象研究大学本科毕业论文.doc

苏州科技学院本科生毕业论文

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.
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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

苏州科技学院本科生毕业论文
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 should 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. So 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
With 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 s