Student Academic Engagement in the EFL Classrooms: Silence as a Form of Classroom Participation
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LANGUAGES' EDUCATION AND TEACHING, cilt.8, sa.4, ss.92-100, 2020 (Hakemli Dergi)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 8 Sayı: 4
- Basım Tarihi: 2020
- Doi Numarası: 10.29228/ijlet.46359
- Dergi Adı: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LANGUAGES' EDUCATION AND TEACHING
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Linguistic Bibliography, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, Directory of Open Access Journals
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.92-100
- Karadeniz Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Silence in the classroom is mostly considered to be a negative and undesirable behavior of students. Teachers want their students to take part in the ongoing communication and activities in the classroom since student engagement is among the best predictors of learning and development. In fact, recent research has suggested a relationship between silence and learning, seeing it as a means of communication. The present study aims to investigate the perceptions of a group of EFL students about why they remain silent in the classroom and the relationship between silence and their learning. To this end, a questionnaire was distributed among 117 EFL undergraduate students which addressed several variables concerning the classroom engagement styles of students. Based on the interpretation of the results, it has been found that students are generally silent in the classroom and there is a significant difference between male and female students when it comes to participation. The study concludes that an understanding of the meanings of silence in the classroom may change a teacher’s perspective and help them redefine participation in classrooms to include silence.