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江 西 理 工 大 学 南 昌 校 区毕 业 设 计（论文）中国大学生英语口语课堂沉默现象的解析An Analysis of Chinese College Students Silence in Oral English Classes系 别：文理系专 业：商务英语班 级：09级二班学 生：温馨学 号：09361225指导教师：吴素琼 职称：讲师江西理工大学2012届专科生毕业论文毕业论文独创性声明本人声明所呈交的毕业论文是本人在导师指导下进行的研究工作及取得的研究成果。据我所知，除了文中特别加以标注和致谢的地方外，论文中不包含其他人已经发表或撰写过的研究成果，也不包含为获得 江西理工大学或其他教育机构的毕业证书而使用过的材料。与我一同工作的同志对本研究所做的任何贡献均已在论文中作了明确的说明并表示谢意。论文作者签名（手写）： 签字日期：ContentsAbstractI. Introduction1 1.1 Background Information11.2 Research Objectives and Significance1 II. Definition of Silence in Class2 2.1 Classification of Silence in Class3 2.2 Research Review3 III. Results and Discussions43.1 Silence Caused by Chinese Culture and Tradition4 3.1.1 Results and Cases43.1.2 Analysis of Silence from cultural Perspective5 3.2 Silence Caused by Personality and Gender6 3.2.1 Results and Cases63.2.2 Analysis of Silence from Personal Perspective63.3 Silence Caused by Environment73.3.1 Results and Cases7 3.3.2 Analysis of Silence from Environment Perspective8 IV. Conclusion9BibliographyAcknowledgements目 录摘要第一章 引言.11.1 背景资料.11.2 研究的目的和意义.1第二章 课堂沉默的定义.22.1课堂沉默的分类.32.2研究述评.3第三章 结果与讨论.43.1中国文化和传统导致的沉默.43.1.1结果与案例.43.1.2从文化角度分析沉默.53.2人格和性别导致的沉默.63.2.1结果与案例.63.2.2 从个人角度分析沉默.63.3 环境导致的沉默.73.3.1结果与案例.73.3.2从环境角度分析沉默.8第四章 结束语.9参考文献致谢AbstractIn recent years, it has been a common phenomenon for Chinese college students to keep silent in oral English classes. However, keep silent in oral English class could be induced a negative effect to the Chinese students ability of spoken English. According to this phenomenon, many home and abroad researchers have devoted to the reasons causing Chinese students silence and passivity in foreign language classes especially in general English classes, but few attempts have been made to explore the factors that Chinese college students to keep silent in oral English classes.What factors lead to students silence in oral English classes? What techniques or methods can be adopted by college oral English teachers to enhance students class participation? The present thesis, focusing its attention on these two questions, strives to explore the factors resulting in Chinese college students silence in oral English classes and to examine the importance of the factors by employing the theories of sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, psychology and pedagogy and scientific research methods. It is discovered that a complex mix of Chinese traditions and cultures, students characters, language proficiency, classroom environment and teachers way of questioning in class play significant roles in determining the level of students class participation, or rather, they are the causes resulting in students silence in oral English classes. In light of these findings, some implications and suggestions in terms of oral English enhancement are proposed for college oral English. These suggestions include establishing a harmonious classroom atmosphere, building a sound rapport with students, enriching the contents and activities.Key words: Silence； Oral English； Causes； suggestions.摘 要近年来，中国大学生在英语口语课堂中的沉默是一个较为普遍的现象。而英语口语课堂的沉默会使学生的口语水平停滞不前，甚至倒退。针对这一情况，中西方学者进行了大量的理论与实证性研究，但并没有深入了解学生群众的观点和看法。是什么原因导致中国大学生在口语课堂保持沉默？而大学英语老师又能采取什么样的策略来提高学生参与课堂的积极性？本论文从这两个问题出发，运用社会语言学，心理语言学，心理学及教育学理论，结合科学的研究方法与前人的研究，围绕这两个问题展开了讨论。本论文吸取了前人理论研究与实证调查中得到普遍认可的思想，通过与同学们访谈，讨论来进行分析，力求从大学生的角度来寻找导致中国大学生在英语口语课堂上保持沉默的原因。研究发现：社会习俗与文化传统，学生的个人性格特点以及课堂环境与氛围在据顶学生参与英语口语课堂活动的程度上都起着重要作用，也可以说是导致学生保持沉默的主要原因。基于本次研究的发现,结合前人的研究基础,本论文提出了一些实际的、具体的策略和建议,如:营造课堂良好氛围、与学生建立良好的师生关系、丰富课堂内容等。这些教学建议能够有效提高中国大学生英语口语课堂的参与力度,减少大学生在英语口语课堂的沉默现象,从而改进英语口语教学。关键词：沉默； 英语口语； 原因； 建议。I. Introduction1.1 Background Information From the beginning of twenty-first century, the reform of teaching and learning in college English class has been brought forward and become popular in the education. In the past, the way that teachers speak on platform and students listen and take notes in the class has found to be inappropriate for college English teaching. The traditional teaching methods neglect helping the students to perceive the ability of speaking English. Change is necessarily needed in the English teaching method. In a long period of time and in many aspects of society, colleges arrange more and more oral English classes to train the ability to speak, but students are still unwilling to open their mouth and speak, it is urgent to solve. Many educators and teachers are very valuable and helpful.Chinese students are found reluctant in class, especially in oral English classes. (Liu, 2000) In this research paper, many problems in oral English classes are presented. College students are passive to participate in classroom activities: they are not willing to answer the questions even though they know the answers to the questions; they do not ask teachers when they do not understand; they usually do not make a sound in class but to listen to the teachers; they would rather keep silent in class rather than discuss with their classmates when teachers ask them to mutual discussion. Most of the students do not have the interest or the confidence in learning and participating in the oral class, they keep silent in order to escape from oral English class, and they prefer to listen and take notes by themselves. All of these are disadvantageous for learning oral English. Therefore, silence in oral English class is a problem which becomes more and more urgent to solve in the teaching and learning. In order to solve this problem, it is important to find the reasons behind silence.1.2 Research Objectives and SignificanceWith all kinds of college students as research subjects, the objectives of this research are to find out and analyze the causes of students silence in oral English class. In this way, teachers will get to know how to communicate with their students and help them willing to speak in class. Hopefully, this will help the students to improve their English speaking proficiency.Another purpose of this research is to help the students to find their ideal job after them graduation. In contemporary society, the purpose of many students to study in college is to get their ideal job easily. While most of the companies require new staff to have high English level especially global corporation and foreign-funded enterprises, even have their interviews in English. In this round, interviewers could get some information from the interviews, like English level, English speaking and some views of interviewees. At this time, a high level of English speaking helps, while a low level cumbers. College is a place to train students and help them to perceive abilities, while English ability is seen as one of the most important ability for college students, thus students English ability improvements means a lot to college education. Therefore it is urgent and necessary to conduct such kinds of research in this area. II. Definition of Silence in ClassSilence is a very vital way of communication which is easy to see in our daily life. Saying nothing or making no sound sometimes could mean a lot and has a pragmatic function. Silence is nonverbal communication between people in a social group. Teaching in class is a process of communication between teachers and students. Thus, silence in class is also a common phenomenon. The silence or the failure of communication in class is almost caused by the students. The most common situations are like following: after teachers asked their questions, there is no response; it is an obvious example of silence. When teachers give times for discussion, most of the students prefer to keep quite or chat, rather than open their mouths to give their opinions. Once the students feel confused about something they learn, they would not raise their hands to make it clear to the teacher, theyd rather look it up after class. All of these are typical facts in oral English classes.According to Liu xiangqian(2005)， silence is defined as a collection of obstacles of communication in class. Teaching is a process of passing information from teacher to students. When the teacher gives clear information and students could communicate with the teacher well, the class goes smoothly; if the students feel confused about the information from the teachers, there would be a long time silent for the students to think and understanding the exact meaning from the teacher. When silence appears, it means that teachers should make some change to make teaching goes more smoothly.2.1 Classification of Silence in ClassSilence, as a complex phenomenon, could be classified into different types from different angles. In class, when the teachers give questions, the students are supposed to answer the questions in a second. If the student do not answer the question immediately that is not because they are trying to think about the question but because the can not get the exact meaning of the question or they get interrupted by the environment. When the teachers give their questions, the student do not answer the questions due to several possible reasons, such as the students knowing nothing about the question, they do not listen to the teachers carefully or they do not want to cooperate with the teachers. When this situation appears, teachers would make the students get the clear idea of the lecture or make a comment on the students.Bruneau (1973) speaks three form of silence: psychological, interactive and socio-cultural. He defines the differences between the three terms of the perception of time. Psychological silence is very short. It is illustrated by hesitation in a conversation or by a deliberate slowing down in order to aid the addressee to understand what has just been said. Other instances self-corrections and stuttering, Interactive silence is longer than psychological silence, and is related to interpersonal relationship： turn-taking also plays a role here. Bruneau admits, however, that“psycholinguistic, slow-time silences are often difficult to distinguish from interactive silence”. The third typesocio-cultural silenceseems to underlie the first two, since the social and cultural habits may“manipulate both psychological and interactive silence” (Bruneau , 1973) .2.2 Research Review As a lot topic in the area of education, silence in class has received high attention from researchers and educationalists that mainly focus on the causes of silence in oral English classes. in recent year, numerous Chinese researchers pay attention to silence in class and its causes from perspectives of Chinese culture, the magisterial role of teachers in class, the characteristics of students, and the lack of proficiency of speaking English .Li Jaimei (2003) brings forward the main causes that make Chinese students silence in class are the way the teachers render a lecture, the gender of the students and cultural effects. Feng Xihong (2003) insists that Chinese tradition and culture. Chinese personality and the way of school teaching are to decisive factors for Chinese students keeping silent in oral English classes. Zhang kun (2008) tends to think that emotional factors, social factors and teaching methods cause the silence in English classes. From the researches above, we could see that different researchers have their views from different perspectives. They believe that Chinese traditions and culture shape the habit of Chinese students English learning. They keep silent in class from primary school, since the teachers require them to keep disciplined in class. They behave like this for so many years, and they can not change this mode of learning when they come to college, even the teachers require them to change. There are also a lot of foreign educators to find silence in oral English classes interesting, and they make an effort on this way. Jackson (2002) found silence in this business English class is related to educational background, society and culture, and emotional factors. He tends to think that silence in English classes is a negative behavior which is bad for language learning. Petress (2001) considers that silence in class implies some negative information, including the students are not interested in the topic they are discussing or the class they are taking; they can not understand what they are learning; and they do not like the way they are learning things, so they do not believe that in this learning process and learning strategy.III. Results and Discussions3.1 Silence Caused by Chinese Culture and Tradition The social cultural factor has been proved by previous studies to be very influential to students silence. It could influence every social individual in terms of thinking, views of value and behavior. Liu and Zhong (2005) put it that the cultural factor has a fundamental impact on silence. In china, silence is regarded as a veiled communication while in the US. It is taken as an inactive and negative behavior.3.1.1 Results and Cases According to the talking with students, they are talking something about their feelings. Student Zhang is a sophomore English major. In oral English classes, she often keeps silent and it seems that she is thinking. When asked the causes she did this, she gave her own explanation as the following: From primary school, Chinese students have required to listen carefully in the class. It is only after the teacher has asked her particularly to answer can she stand up and answer the questions. Questions from the students are only supposed to ask after class. This tradition is formed in the past twelve years which is a long period and is not change easily. Student Li thinks that the teacher in the class is the authority, who should be respected. Even she has different opinions about one issue, she still keeps her ideas, because she thinks that questioning the teachers would embarrass them. Student Zeng is a clever student. Whenever the teacher asks him to answer the question, she would answer it perfectly. When asked why he kept silent in the oral English class, he told that he had the answer to almost every question and answering was an easy thing for him. However, he thinks that standing out often would make the classmates think he is showing off. He also maintains that“ The gun hits the person who takes the lead” , which would make the classmates be unfriendly to him. Student Liu also gives her causes for keeping silent in oral English class. She told that speaking in public is difficult for her, and she is afraid of losing face in the class if she could not answer the questions well or could not speak fluently.3.1.2 Analysis of Silence from cultural Perspective Culture, defined by Hofstede as“the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the member of one human group for another” (Hofstede 1980) , has great impact on every social activity. Chinese college students silence in oral English classes, as an activity in society, is also deeply affected by Chinese traditional culture. China is a country of etiquette and education career has long been paid great attention to. As the Chinese old saying goes, “silence is gold” . We have been abiding by this doctrine since we were young, keeping silent is regarded as a morality to show respect, and modesty. In the classroom, we told to keep silent when teacher is speaking and to sit straight in our seat. In our family, we are told to keep silent when parents are talking. It is quite common for the elders to tell their children to speak less as much as possible in public. Too much talk is viewed as lack of fine breeding. Therefore, it is no doubt that students act passively in the classroom. When interpreting Chinese students passive learning behavior, such as silence. In China, “face”concept is also an influential factor to human social activity.“Face”has to do with the credibility or image of a person. People will lose face if they are embarrassed, insulted, demeaned or yelled at by others. The Chinese people are traditionally very facingsensitive. In order to maintain their most sacred face, they pay special attention to face- work. “Face”shows up in the many ways and really begins early in life. Chinese children learn it as they are growing up. As the child grows, face creates a strong pressure for an individual. They are afraid of losing face when they are at school or at home. If there is a slight chance of losing face, they would think it twice or even quit. Face culture has negative influence on students learning, especially for English learning. The more Chinese students care about their face, the less chance they speak in public. The less they speak the less spoke ability they gain. Thus face factor is the root of this vicious cycle.3.2 Silence Caused by Personality and Gender The interview with individual students shows a relationship between students personality and performance in oral English class. Individual differences play an important role in students silence.3.2.1 Results and Cases Based on the basis of interview with individual students, it is obtain that students do not want to be focus of the public and they are not willing to speak in public. During the interview, it could be seen that student Liao was not a very communicative girl. She was shy. She spoke slowly, trying not to make any grammatical mistakes, but her pronunciation was very good. She owed her lack of oral English ability to her introverted personality. Whenever the teacher asked questions in class, she just murmured, although she knew the answer. She felt nervous when asked to answer questions in lass. After class, she only listens to and read English by herself, never participates in the class activities. Student Sun gave his sample explanation of the cause of his silence in class to his personality:“ I do not like to talk with others. When I have free time, I like reading books alone. In my opinion, thinking alone brings more advantages than sharing views with others. So, I do not like to speak in public. ” From the talking, it is easy to know that males are more eager to keep silent in oral English class, and females are more active in oral English class compared to males students.3.2.2 Analysis of Silence from Personal Perspective Personality includes those aspects of an individuals behavior, attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, actions and feelings which are seen as typical and distinctive of that person and recognized as such by that person and others (Rechards et al, 2000). Personality is composed of personality traits, like risk-taking, tolerance, inhibition, self-esteem, sensitivity to rejection, tolerance of ambiguity, extroversion/ introversion etc. . . . It is true that these personality traits are correlated. Some researchers believe traits like risk-taking are more correlated with extroversion, and traits like self-esteem, anxiety and inhibition are more cor