A Study of Students’ Silence and Teachers’ Questioning Strategies in College English Classroom

Abstract

With the development of English language teaching, teachers have paid more and more attention to communicative language teaching and made efforts to encourage classroom interaction. However, many college students are in the habit of keeping silent which discourage teachers and restrict the effective communication between teachers and students. As one of the biggest problems, it has attracted much attention from more and more researchers. This paper here aims to investigate the major causes of students’ silence by means of questionnaire and class observation. Through a detailed description and analysis of the collected data, students’ learning motivation and reasons for silence in classroom are made clear, anxiety being the main cause triggering students’ silence. Meanwhile on the basis of analysis of teachers’ teaching mode, the paper points out that teachers’ questioning strategies have large influence on students’ silence in class, and improper teaching mode are bound to make students feel anxious. Finally, suggestions about improving teaching strategies are put forward for the purpose of lessening students’ feeling of anxiety and decreasing their silence in classrooms.