By Sameen Gul
Why students don’t speak in class? It is observed that sometimes students are simply shy or bored or unprepared. But it is also been noticed that racism, genders, and classism often work to silence some voices, and no doubt, sometimes students are quiet because they have a bad or uncooperative teacher. The vast majority of the students understand speaking in class to be a testing situation in which they are expected to provide a right answer.
The more pressure a professor creates through grading class participation, the more complicated it becomes for students to speak. By observing an instructor how he or she interacts with the class, the kinds of questions he/she asks, and how he/she responds to their voices. They determine whether they are expected to perform on an oral quiz. The students in the study also consider their self images, their knowledge, and their comfort levels with criticism and argument in the classroom setting when deciding whether to speak or to be silent. They understand that their classmates’ opinions of them will be affected, if not formed, by the opinions they offer in class.
Students who feel shy or uncomfortable to step forward in class discussions are shown as much potentiated on some social media discussion like Facebook, twitter or Google plus. It may be the reason that there they feel free to comment or speak as they are not being noticed by the class of 30, 40 students, and they know that even if they give the wrong point they will not have to face the criticism on face and later it encourages them and build confidence and undoubtedly enhances their knowledge.
Social networking has increased the rate and quality of collaboration for students. They are better able to communicate meeting times or share information quickly, which can increase productivity and help them learn how to work well in groups.
Think, Analyze & Share 
The social networking sites have really stormed are lives. They have become a basic necessity like the food and clothing. Their influence is huge. In this modern era, I think youth must be updated about everything happening all around the world, being social animals we all are addicted to social media, and they are helping us a lot in brushing up some qualities of ours like we can improve our knowledge by joining knowledgeable pages, as youth is not interested in reading news paper. But as there are two aspect white and black it’s our way and mentality how we use this social media. But keeping in mind that social networking is a virtual world not real. Its awareness is very important for every human being those uses these sites. Remember excess of any can be very harmful.
Not taking part in class discussions or sitting quietly in class in something very common in our todays classrooms. Only those students feel shy in class discussions, who were never really encouraged to participate in classrooms ,at some point of time .They may have developed mistrust or guilt feelings perhaps “feeling of inferiority could be a reason” earlier in their childhood. Because if a child is motivated by his/her teacher and parents he can never be ” a shy person” . Confidence develops during the early years of childhood. Teachers should always motivate students to speak up ,they should try to put as many questions as they can to make students able to think. This thing will make a student use his/her brain. Many times when a student speak up in a classroom , and if the answer is incorrect, teacher will right away say a very negative word “wrong” and then what will happen ? That student will lose his/her confidence, and then after that, many will hesitate in uttering a word. Social Networking sites definitely help students but that too ,to some extent . This is all about confidence developed and training given through proper attention and time during early stages of development. Once a child grows up it gets hard to develop those abilities ,social sites cannot make much big of a difference then.
No doubt, using social media in a classroom context is providing an effective and interactive platform for each and every student to reflect his or her own opinion in a more convenient and comfortable manner in which as you said they express there self as if they are free from all sort of peer and teacher pressure.
But, taking in account the quality of argumentation and the whole decorum of that social media, some of the skeptics have an opinion that this social networking is sometimes leading discussions to off-topic, especially intimidating or inappropriate remarks in the discussions are affecting the productive cause of learning. Therefore, I think it would be on the teacher’s part that how he or she will make students confined within the respective topic and do a productive job that will enhance their learning in an actual sense.
Now a days in this present era scope of social media is very vast and putting the new generation on a right pathway and allowing the students to express their feelings without feeling any hesitation because they don’t have to face any criticism on social media they are free to express their thoughts ,views and visions……………..
But unfortunately our teachers are not following this rubric they are not motivating the students to express themselves their main focus is on marks that you will loss the marks if u don’t speak this thing create a sense of fear in students and they are unable to speak freely.
yes i think that there is no harm in using social media for discussions, because it can cater all types of students, as mentioned who are shy and don’t feel comfortable while being argumentative in classroom settings, it can be a great platform for that students who have problems in language and who cannot argue instantly and need time to think about a topic and then respond, apart from this as everything has its pros and cons, same is with the discussion on social media, because as people are not face to face they can use foul and abusive language which is a flaw in the discussion on this kind of medium.
the hype of using social network sites is one of the top most discussed topic of everyone these days,and people are likely to use these social sites more than their academic sites but this can’t be compared to the level of confidence of an individual.
yes this is true that there are students in the classroom who don’t feel comfortable in contributing in discussion part during lectures but this can’t be interlinked that these students can perform better in discussions on socil sites.
students who haven’t got any opportunity in the class to speak and who have been punished for not saying right things are the ones who suffer problem of lacking of confidence, which is inbuilt in everyone.
if someone has confidence problem, they will resist taking part in any discussion whether that is in class or on socail site.
so for me, discussion forum doesn’t matter but it’s the individual’s confidence which allows or refrains it from taking part in discussion.