Classroom Silence in College English Class in China

Classroom silence has always been the issue that exists in oral English classroom and that needs to be addressed. It will not only hamper the effective interaction and communication between teacher and students, but is the result of students’ spoken practice. This study focused on the two agents in classroom interaction: namely, the teacher and the students, to find out the causes and further explore the implications for college English teaching. This study found out many aspects leading to classroom silence which are students’ learning motivation, language proficiency, students’ personality, teaching material, and teaching method. Thus, measures from the perspective of Interaction Theory were proposed. In the long run, students will increase their classroom interaction in a certain degree until the present teaching problems are solved.


Introduction
Interaction is of vital importance for EFL learners to improve their communicative competence in English. Nevertheless, in some college English classes in China, only some students actively participate in class interaction. Some students' silence will lead to the failure of class interaction, which exerts a negative influence on the improvement of students' English capability. In recent years, the phenomenon of silence in college English classes has gradually aroused concern in the academia. Foreign scholars, especially Asian scholars, have been exploring the definition of influential factors of classroom silence to tackle the issue. the basis of a social and interactive space. As proposed in former studies, interaction is defined as an activity established between the sender, the receiver, and the context (Simmel, 1908;Wells, 1981). A stress should be put on classrooms where students learn and socialize. In rebuilding and explaining the interlingual system, the socialized interaction has been significant (Ellis, 1984).
Discussion activity promotes an active atmosphere where learners get to assess information and exploit a more developed approach to different problems (Thomas & Goering, 2018). Learners were able to express their thoughts in debate practice after receiving the debate practice in English classes (Fauzan, 2016). The acquisition of a foreign language happens with more efficiency in a relaxed social interaction atmosphere (Vygosky, 1962).
Teachers who interact with students should adopt appropriate techniques to promote efficient and effective understanding for the students (Lydy, Oyelana, Ejidike, Akintoye, & Olufunmilayo, 2016). The technique refers to an ability to use methods to attain a desired result (Mifflin, 2002). Connected to this, the DBE (2011) has suggested that foreign language teachers make preparations to produce opportunities to practice the foreign language for learners. There are three categories for the techniques for implementing classroom interaction pedagogy (known as CIP), which are teacher-to-learner or learners, learner-to-learner, and learners-to-learners (Dagarin, 2016;Ratharishnan et al., 2018;Rao, Newlin-Huas, & EHrhardt, 2016;Tanveer, 2008).
The teaching principles, like linguistic principles, cognitive principles, and affective principles, constitute solid foundation for the theory of language classroom interaction. There are seven principles of interaction, that is, automaticity, intrinsic motivation, strategic investment, risk-taking, the language-culture connection, interlingua, and communicative competence (Brown, 1994).
Obviously, classroom interaction is a phenomenon of harmony between teachers and students. It involves the language communication, thought communication, feeling communication, and act communication of the students. It is considered to be beneficial for both teachers and students.
This research aims to get a general knowledge of how college teachers and students understand the passive silence and to explore the reasons resulting in the phenomenon in college English classes.
More specifically, this research aims to answer the following research questions: 1. How do teachers and students perceive the silence in college English classes? 2. What are the affecting factors causing the silence? 3. What measures are to be adopted to break the silence in class respectively from the part of student, the part of teacher, and the part of culture?

Methodology Method
To get a better understanding and to explore resolutions for students' silence, the study employed three research instruments. The questionnaire counted the occurrence of the major contributing factors to silence as demonstrated in the context of classroom settings. The quantitative results were used to further explain the phenomenon. The classroom observation and interviews with students and teachers are to explore the phenomenon more deeply. The qualitative analytic aspect, on the other hand, capitalized on the discussion of the teachers and students understanding of the classroom silence and further strategies taken in the three aspects.

Data Collection
The participants of the research are 90 college students of non-English majors studying in Hu'nan Institute of Engineering. 15 experienced English teachers with a teaching experience of more than 10 years were also involved in this research. The study chose students from three different non-English majors at random as the subject of the research. By the time the study was conducted, the non-English freshmen had been learning English for about 10 years and were considered to be of intermediate level.
Classroom observation was the first step of the research which lasted one month. To ensure the reliability of the result, the subjects were chosen randomly and none of them was informed of before the experiment. MP4 was used as an assistant tool to record the whole process of the interactions in the classroom. During the process of observation, the researcher kept records and took notes, like teacher's name, lesson type, the observer's overall experience, especially the behaviors of the silent students. During the break, the researcher had some informal interviews with the students for more detailed information.
Based on the observation, 90 copies of questionnaires were sent out to subjects of non-English major students. Next, the formal interviews were conducted. A total number of 20 college students and five teachers accepted the interview. Interviews with teachers and students were conducted in Chinese for the purpose of smooth communication between the interviewees and the researcher. Finally, all the data were put into the software SPSS 20.0 for analysis. By using the software, the data were presented in the forms of Microsoft Excel for further study.

Data Analysis
The hypothesis of the study is that the major factors which affect students' silence in classroom fall into the categories of the part of students, the part of teachers, and the part of culture. The research is thus designed to collect and analyze the data to prove it.
Classroom observation was used at the first stage of the study. With the notes and records taken from classroom observation, part of the recording of student-student interaction and teacher-student interaction were transcribed into computer. Typical examples of students' silence in teacher-student interaction were carefully chosen as experimental materials for further discussion. The recording was expected to reveal the actual situations and student-student interaction and teacher-student interaction in class and probe into the factors which tend to cause students' silence.
The data of interview were analyzed manually. After the recording and notes of interviews were transcribed into computers, the transcripts were reviewed to get a general knowledge of students' and teachers' point of view of silence after removing the non-related statements. Afterwards, the remaining statements were classified into several groups in accordance with the research question. All data were finally organized into an integral for further analysis. The final extracts from the Chinese interviews were translated into English by the researcher.
Questionnaires were designed based on some famous studies on this topic, such as on the Foundation of Oxford's Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (1989), Schulz's (2001) and Burgess and Etherington's (2002) questionnaire. There are two questionnaires for the study. The questionnaire for students included 23 items that were related to the possible reasons which form different perspectives of various factors. The other questionnaire for teachers included 10 items, each of which included four choices and teachers should choose one according to their teaching experience.

Factors Affecting Students' Silence in Classroom on the Part of the Students
Students are the main agent in classroom activities. Through the data analysis, students' personality, language proficiency, and learning motivation are the most influential factors leading to the silence in the teaching procedure.
Students' personality. According to the interview and the questionnaires, students' personality is closely related to silence.
In terms with the concept of extroversion and introversion (Carl, 1921), the direction of physical energy determines one's personality. The introverts, whose energy flows inwards, are usually quiet, introspective, and less sociable. Through classroom observation, the introverted students are inclined to remain silent in routine communication. Among all types of shyness, communication apprehension is the one caused by fear of or anxiety about interaction with others (Horwitz & Cope, 1986). The introverted students find difficulty in control of the communication and are afraid of being caught sight of.
In questionnaire, 69% of the students admit the direct relationship between their silence and their introverted characteristic. 61% of the students tend to sit in the back row to avoid the class participation. 52.2% of the students feel nervous when asking questions. 33% of the students feel embarrassed when teachers correct their mistakes in public. 71% of the students are likely to answer the questions when they are quite sure about the answers. The interview shows that female students tend to be more introverted.
Students' language proficiency. 52% of the students admit that their silence was attributed to their lack of interest in English. In classroom observation, for most of the time, when students are asked to answer the question in English, they usually lower their head and keep silent to avoid being noticed by teachers. By contrast, 85% of the students will speak in class if they are allowed to speak in Chinese. 58% of the students said they could not understand the lecture and replied the question due to their poor English capability. However, if they could answer the question in their mother tongue, they were relaxed and talkative and their answers were original and impressive. The language proficiency especially the comprehension of listening and speaking is one of the determinant factors of classroom silence.
Students' learning motivation. Learning motivation is of great significance in second language acquisition process. It is said to be the driving force that leads to more extensive use of language in classroom (Domyei, 1998;Crandall, 2000). 54% of the students maintained that English was useless and they would like to keep silent in class. 48% of the students admitted that they would not participate in classroom activities which were of no use to the final grade. Besides, 68% of the students ascribed their motivation of study to the acquisition of western culture. And 78% of the students held the opinion that they studied English to pass CET-4.

Factors Affecting Students' Silence in Classroom on the Part of Teachers
Teachers have the power to dominate and guide the classroom activity thus have great impact on the teaching process. Therefore, the teaching method and teaching material are a salient part in classroom interaction.
Teaching method. In the questionnaires for teachers, 70% of the teachers maintained that the teacher-centered teaching approach remained prevailing in college English classroom. 75% of the students found the traditional teacher-centered teaching method dull and boring.
It is believed that teachers have a great influence on language acquisition. The teaching method is the key factor leading to classroom silence. The various educational background, personality, and knowledge frame of different teachers constitute different teaching methods. The traditional teaching approach in China attaches great importance to teacher, textbook, and grammar. The classroom observation indicates that teachers tend to take the traditional "chalk and talk" teaching method, leaving few or no time for discussion and free talk. In classroom, most students get bored with the traditional teaching mode where the teacher has the overwhelming and predominant authority.
Teaching material. 65% of the students argued that their course had adopted the outdated teaching material which attached great importance to grammar instead of practical communicative ability. In this process, students' interests gradually fade in classroom interaction.
The questionnaires, classroom observation, and the interview show that the outdated and dull teaching materials lead to student's silence. Undoubtedly, the teaching material is of great importance in the teaching process, in which the information input comes into being. Some teaching materials are labeled as imposing negative impact on the teaching process which are listed out as dull texts, too much grammar instruction, obsolete contents, boring topics, and so on.

Factors Affecting Student's Silence in Classroom on the Part of Chinese Culture
The questionnaires, classroom observation, and the interview showed that the Chinese culture also caused student's silence. The influence is discussed from face protection. The questionnaire showed that the students were not sure whether they should have a discussion if their argument differs from the teacher's. Face is an aspect of their self-image, particularly as they relate to people (Brown & Levinson, 1978). Face is rooted in Chinese culture and, defined as social esteem, is related to the negotiation and balance between self-evaluation. According to the data collected in the study, some students tend to be silent so as to avoid contempt, error, and shame. Some students with good grades are also unwilling to answer to questions to avoid being showy among the peer classmates. Language learners have to risk making mistakes.
In accordance with the results in the study, several measures are suggested for teachers and students to break the silence.
Seize the opportunity and call the students by name. As Helgesen and Brown (1994) mentioned, there is a convention governing classroom activities in every culture. Due to the Confucian cultural heritage, Chinese students are apparently passive and reticent (Spizzica, 1997). The majority of students choose to be a good listener and think twice before making a speech. Even those who know the answer are reluctant to reply because of the reactions of their professors and peer students (Zhou, Knoke, & Sakamoto, 2005). So teachers may call students by their names after giving them enough time to think about the question. As long as a few students make speeches, other will participate in the negotiation. In the college English classes, teacher might as well engage the students in the classroom by calling the roll and assigning tasks. They should seize the opportunity, promote individual students to speak, and drive more students to take the initiative to participate in classroom activities.
Adopt a variety of classroom activities and liven up the classroom atmosphere. The main purpose of classroom activities is to preferably promote students' language output. Therefore, teachers should study the cognitive psychology of contemporary students to set a classroom environment in which the students feel free to communicate and manifest their dominant position. The design of the questions should be informative, interesting, hierarchical, and close to life to get more students involved in the interaction. A wide array of communication channels should be offered, such as discussion, debate, group activities, role play in some mock context, presentation with the aid of some advanced techniques by the students. In addition, students should be given more wait time. Considering the shortage of language knowledge, some suggestive words and sentences are to be given to students for expressing themselves and filling the silence. In the process of speech, attention should be attached to students with various personalities at all levels to ensure their participation in classroom and initiative to make a speech.
Cultivate students' self-correction ability and give them more positive evaluation. SLA theory shows that language output error is a process to acquire a language. Along with the constant development of language ability, language learners become naturally aware of their mistakes. Therefore, errors should be given more tolerance and expectation should be lowered to some extent. More attention should be paid to the content of the problem and more opportunities should be allowed for students' self-correction and prompt guidance and help should be offered in times of language disfluency and inaccuracy.
Due to the particularity of foreign language, students make more mistakes in foreign language classes than in other courses and tend to be more anxious and attach more importance to teacher's evaluation (Petress, 2001). Teachers should avoid imposing negative, critical, and indifferent assessment and learn to discover the merits of students, respect, understand, and appreciate them and offer them emotional support. Positive evaluation will inspire students, greatly promote their desire to communicate, and produce a strong self-confidence and initiative, thereby to minimize frustration, eliminate their emotional disorder, and build their sense of self-efficacy.
Create more opportunities for collaborative learning and reduce students' learning anxiety. Silence in foreign language learning caused by anxiety is a common phenomenon. In SLA learning, anxiety is more concentrated on listening and speaking, especially the verbal expression in class. When learners are obliged to communicate in the unfamiliar second language, their self-evaluation will be threatened (Horwits & Cope, 1986). When learners have to adopt a language which they have not mastered skillfully to answer a question, suppression comes into being. Thus the threat together with the suppression leads to the anxiety (Tsui, 1995). The anxiety will be lessened with collaborative work. When working together, students are given more time to think and more channels to get help from peer students and express their ideas more easily. Meanwhile, their own ideas are supplemented and updated in the exchange with each other. Therefore, creating more opportunities for cooperative learning is regarded as a feasible way to reduce learning anxiety.
Establish a good relationship between teachers and students. Considering the limited time for communication in class, not all the students have the chance to talk with teachers. Given that, teachers should portray their guiding role beyond the classroom, making full use of the network tools as Email and QQ to interact with students and help them solve the problems met in language learning. They should offer some suggestions to coordinate the classroom teaching. It will reduce the distance between teachers and students caused by power, and increase students' trust in teachers to establish a sound teacher-student relationship. A good relationship will greatly promote the development of classroom teaching and students are more willing to participate in classroom activities and answer the questions voluntarily. In view of all the factors, to build a harmonious relationship between teachers and students is a win-win situation for both sides.

Conclusion
Results of the study have initially provided us good insights of the factors leading to classroom silence. It is also noticed that interpersonal interaction is very effective to improve students' silence which takes place in the purposeful exchange of ideas, information, and opinions. To reduce such a prevailing infinite issue, it is quite necessary for college teachers to enhance the positive effects such as learning attitude and motivation and diminish the passive effects as introverted characteristics and poor English proficiency by adjusting teaching method and providing more chances for students' involvement in classroom participation and a harmonious atmosphere to encourage them to speak. To schedule appropriate classroom activities and after-class tasks to arouse students' interest and enhance their confidence is top priority in a short term. Interpersonal Interaction Theory provides a theoretical basis and practical guidance for teachers to design and carry out the productive classroom activities in virtue of its advanced philosophy and science principles to design the tasks.
The study is not without limitations. The size and the number of the subjects are limited. Only 90 college students and 15 teachers from Hu'nan Institute of Engineering participated in the questionnaires. The results may not be universal. It is essential to further the research with a large number of samples in more colleges for more detailed results in a larger scope. Hence, more research techniques should be adopted.
This research has proposed some suggestions for future college English teaching. It is necessary to be cautious when adopting the findings in other situations. In the further study, more efforts should be made to overcome the above mentioned limitations and more attention should be paid to realize the practical communication and interaction in language learning programs.