随着我国教育理念的不断创新与发展，课堂教学模式也在不断革新，课堂的中心由教师转向学生，学生需要积极地参与到课堂活动中，与教师展开互动。可是出于多方面的原因，学生不愿意在课堂中踊跃发言，“课堂沉默”成为一种普遍现象，在英语课上问题则更加突出。但是在语言学习中，“说”是极其重要的一环，直接关系到教学目标的实现和课堂活动的顺利进行，因此研究课堂沉默及其形成原因很有必要。本研究则将重点放在课堂沉默的心理因素上。 该研究主要采取了问卷调查的方式，对93名来自某重点院校的英语专业大一学生进行了调查，调查内容包括学生在英语课堂上的表现—--是否在课堂上积极用英语发言，他们对部分外在因素（教材，教师，教学方式等）和内在因素（性格等）的评价以及学生的焦虑水平。期望研究出大学生英语课堂沉默的现状并且从认知，动机，情绪情感，人格等角度发现学生在英语课堂上保持沉默的原因。 通过研究，作者发现，绝大部分学生在英语课堂上倾向于保持沉默，其心理因素主要包括由课堂内容，教学方式或是学生自身因素导致的认知资源不足；使自己远离尴尬的动机；由过分焦虑触发的自我防御机制的作用；内向型人格的作用以及从众心理。因此学生自身，教师，学校各个方面都应该采取措施，学生需要调节个人情绪，不断给自己以积极的暗示，通过提高能力建立自信心。教师要为学生创造更加轻松的学习氛围，同时调整自身教学模式，给学生积极的反馈与适当的启示，帮助学生打破沉默。学校则需要合理安排课程时间，让学生在最好的状态下学习英语。

With innovation and development of education ideas in China, the mode of teaching is also changing. The focus shifts from the teacher to the students. Students are supposed to engaged in activities in class actively and interact with teachers. Nevertheless, for many reasons, students are not willing to have speech in class. “Classroom Silence”has become a universal phenomenon, especially in English class. However, in language learning, “speaking” is an extremely fundamental part. It concerns achievement of teaching objects and class activities going on smoothly. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate English classroom silence and its causes. The accent of this research is on psychological reasons of classroom silence. The main research method is questionnaire survey. 93 first-year English majors from a key university participated in this research. The contents of this research include performance of students in English class – whether they are active enough to speak in English, their comments to some external factors (teaching materials, teachers, teaching methods) and internal factors (personality), English language classroom anxiety scale. This research is supposed to investigate current situation of college students’ classroom silence and find out causes why students keep silent in English from aspects like cognition, motivation, emotions and feelings, personality. According to the study, it is found that a large portion of students choose to be silent in English class. The main psychological factors include lack of cognitive resources resulted by teaching contents, teaching methods or students’ own reasons; the motivation to protect people from embarrassing position; defense mechanism caused by excessive anxiety; influence of introversive personality and conformity. It is urgent for students, teachers and colleges to take actions. Students need accommodate their emotions, give themselves positive implication and build confidence through improving their abilities. Teachers should create a relaxing environment for students and adjust their ways of teaching, providing students for positive reflection and proper inspiration to help them to break classroom silence. College also need arrange the courses reasonably so that students can learn English in the best position.