摘 要

大学英语课堂中的沉默现象在一定程度上反映了学生对英语课堂不感兴趣甚至对抗的消极心理，是师生、生生间交流失败的表现之一。这种现象严重影响了英语应用能力的培养，以及大学英语教学质量的提高。

本文结合多次课堂观察、问卷调查和访谈结果，对大学英语课堂的沉默现象进行重新解析。首先，通过对在校大学生进行问卷调查分析了造成学生课堂沉默现象的根源；然后基于问卷访谈的结果和数据的分析，以建构主义学习理论为指导，以学生为主体的任务型教学模式为视角，探讨解决课堂沉默现象的新途径，以切实提高学生的英语口头表达能力。

研究发现，真正导致课堂沉默现象出现的原因是学生英语口语能力不强；以建构主义为指导的任务型教学模式能够成功地改善学生英语口语水平，从而在很大程度上预防课堂沉默现象的发生。

关键词：建构主义学习理论；沉默；任务型教学模式；对策；口头表达能力

Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Research background 1

1.2 Significance of the study 2

1.3 Structure of the thesis 2

2. Demonstration 3

2.1 Literature Review 3

2.1.1 Definitions of Terms 3

2.1.2 Studies abroad 5

2.1.3 Studies at home 6

2.1.4 Summary 7

2.2 Classroom silence in College English Teaching 7

2.2.1 Methodology 7

2.2.2 Results and discussion 9

2.3 Solutions to the problem 13

2.3.1 Methodology 13

2.3.2 Results and discussion 15

3. Conclusion 17

3.1 Major findings 17

3.2 Pedagogical implications 18

3.3 Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research 18

Bibliography 19

Appendix......................................................................................................................21

Analysis of Classroom Silence and Countermeasures Based on Constructivism Learning Theory

1. Introduction
   1. Research background

The reform of collage English curriculum, which began in the early 21st century, demands a big change to cater to modern education requirements. Rather than continuing the teaching mode of the single “speech”, English teachers need to change their teaching modes to a cooperative style, which emphasizes the leading role of students in the classroom learning (Yang, 2006). This requires students to actively participate in the process of activities in the classroom between teachers and students. The main manifestation of students’ participation in the classroom teaching activities is to “say”, which means classroom questioning. Classroom questioning are an important means of teacher-student interaction. And asking questions during the class is one of the most important activities in classroom teaching, helping to achieve a variety of classroom teaching purposes. Practice shows that a good classroom question can arouse students' learning motivation and help students to learn and think better. At the same time, it also provides students with opportunities for drills and demonstrations so that teachers can better understand the students' mastery of what they have learned in class. (Shu amp; Zhuang, 1996) However, in many classrooms, after the teacher sends out the question information, the student always shows a long time "speechless state", which to some extent is due to the poor reception of the information, the deviation of the information comprehension, the difficulty or the judgment based on the existing information. The phenomenon is called "classroom silence. Many teachers find it difficult for students to express their own opinions and their understanding of the problems. It is well-acknowledged that many students are lack of initiative in the face of problems, even if they know the answer to the question. Thus teachers always complain about students’ silence in the classroom, since every time they put forward a question, the students always keep mute as if their mouths were sealed, which puts teachers and students in an awkward position.

At present, the phenomenon of collage English silence in our country reflects the time-consuming and inefficiencies of the teaching mode, which leads to the poor oral English ability as well as the stagnant communication ability of students (Gao, 2008). Therefore, in order to put forward some solving methods regarding these problems, many researchers delve into this phenomenon and try to find out the basic reason.