【正文】 es of speech” According to the argument from Jaworski(1993:17) that regarding silence only as a background to speech would be a drastic oversimplification. “Silence and speech are two intersecting and equally relevant munication categories” The other perspective is that speech and silence form a dialectical relationship with one another. Clair (1998: xiii) argued that silence and voice “should be thought of less as bifurcated concepts and more as selfcontained opposites”. She explained, “Silent practices are pervasive and interwoven with linguistic practices” (1998:20) More specifically, “silence and discourse are bound up in innumerable ways. Their many nuanced meanings and functions are woven together into a plex tapestry” (1998:38) The current situation of silence study at home and abroad Studies at home Chinese students’ silence in EFL class has already drawn many Chinese language scholars’ attention. The case of oversea Chinese students’ silence in EFL class provides breakthrough in the study area. From the investigation of three Chinese students in American classroom, Liu (2020:38) makes an analysis on the basis of interview and observation data. She finds Asian students’ participation code is closely influenced by five major categories: Pedagogical factors (. teaching patterns, participation grading, and chances to speak up), Cognitive factors (. background knowledge, previous learning experience, or psychological readiness), 蘇州科技學(xué)院本科生畢業(yè)論文 7 Affective factors (. motivation ,anxiety, encouragement), Linguistic factors (. language proficiency, municative capability, or accent). Sociocultural factors (. facesaving strategies, politeness strategies concept of status and identify, personality and gender. ), Jackson (2020:6584) focuses on a study on the taciturnity of Chinese students from the ethnographic angle. The participants are in four sections of an Englishmedium undergraduate business course in Hong Kong. The research consists of observations, interviews, and videotapes. Jackson finds that students’ active interaction level is determined by mixtures of affective, educational and sociocultural factors. During the procedure of interview, several types of answers can be mainly summed up: Both male and female interviewees express that the fear of embracement counts as the main reason they remain silent. They choose to be silent when they want to avoid telling some stupid answers or exposing their ignorance in front of the whole class and teachers. The participants also hold the view that their lacking of selfconfidence stop them from speaking up, even challenging their classmates or professors. Some traditional cultures such as the thinking of Confucian on harmony and facesaving strategies may have impacted their perception of what appropriate conduct is in class context. The second thought may lead to the loss of opportunities of participation. GAO Guiling’s draws similar conclusion from her studies (2020:102104). She explains that traditional culture affects students’ learning habit. Due to the traditional teaching patterns, it is quiet mon for students to obey the class regulation that students just follow teachers and do not challenge authority. LI Naigang (2020:243245) does a series of survey to find out the relationship between students’ silence and politeness strategy. Silence can function as both positive and negative politeness strategy. Given the situation that students hope to be accepted, respected and admired by others, then silence acts as positive. While on the other hand, silence can be seen as a kind of negative politeness strategy. In Li’s survey he finds that students pay more attention to their own negative face rather than partner’s especially their teachers’ face. Moreover, silence is regarded as a kind of offrecord strategy or be understood as “Don’t Do the FTA” strategy Studies at abroad In order to find out the reasons for students’ silence, some language scholars have done much experiment with multiple perceptive. Reda (2020) conducts the research on students’ silence by examining the impacting 蘇州科技學(xué)院本科生畢業(yè)論文 8 factors of teachers and pedagogies which will lead students to decide whether to speak or to be silent in class. From the results, she finds that “small gestures” encourage students to speak, which actually reflects the cultivation of teacherstudent relationships. Teachers’ questioning method and attention on feedback will produce psychological hint on students. The positive hint will promote active engagement in class. Nakane (2020:75100) focuses on a typical case analysis. On the basis of the former research, she explores three Japanese students in Australian university in a narrow way What she has found indicates that Japanese students’ participation is strongly influenced by immediate contextual factors , including the participant structures, main topic, and coparticipants’ understanding and performances. She draws the conclusion from the Japanese students’ case that silence can be coconstructed in ongoing negotiation of participation in the classroom. Tatar (2020:284293) makes the qualitative descriptive multicase study of four Turkish graduate students’ classroom participation experiences. Students’ own perceptions are taken into account. Tater summarizes that to nonEnglishspeaking students, there are five dimensions of silence. Those include silence as: (a) a means of participation。 (e) a sign of respect for authority and concern for others. 2. An empirical study of students’ silence in EFL classroom Students’ silence is a mon phenomenon in classroom context in university. The whole research will revolve around the factors related with students’ silence. In order to make theoretical analysis more closely bined with actual situation,