學生在課堂中的沉默現象在言談分析中受到越來越多的關注。大部分的研究透過調查、訪談以及課堂觀察來探討學生在課堂中的參與或不參與的行為，卻鮮少有研究透過分析課室的言談表現去探討教師的提問行為以及等待時間對學生沉默的影響。本研究透過探討老師在一所高中外語課室的提問行為以及提問各種問題後的等待時間來探討和解釋學生的沉默。根據在一所私立高中的初階日文課堂中收集到的語料，學生對於開放問題的答覆以及訪談老師的結果，以對話分析的觀點以及Tsui (1992) 和Weng (2009) 的問題分類，本研究旨在探討老師的問題類型以及提問後的等待時間，這兩個變項對學生的應答特徵以及回答動機的可能影響。
研究結果發現如下：
1. 老師最常使用問虛假問題、尋求訊息以及確認學生是否了解的問題；但是尋求同意、澄清、期待對方重複以及尋求確認卻較少使用。這顯示老師著重知識的傳遞而非創造與學生的互動。
2. 老師提問後的平均等待時間是0.9秒。在尋求資訊以及尋求同意的問題之後，老師的等待時間是最長的；但是平均時間大約只有1 秒。老師的等待時間並未隨著問題類型而變化，對於教學式的問題以及溝通式的問題，老師的等待時間大約是一樣的。
3. 學生在虛假問題和期待對方重複的問題之後會輪到較多的發言機會；然而在了解確認以及尋求同意的問題之後，輪到最少的發言機會。在尋求訊息以及尋求澄清的問題之後，學生仍有40% 的發言機會。
4. 對於老師的問題，學生的答案顯得簡短。只有在Wh-的尋求訊息問題之後，學生會提供較複雜較長的答案。但是與老師的整體互動仍趨向於簡短。除此之外，老師時常拿回自己問題之後的發言權。然而如果老師後續的應對行為除了評論之外，還提供了陳述或承認學生的回答，學生會輪到更多的發言次序。
學生對於他們在課堂上的沉默同時表現出正面及負面的反應：對某些學生而言，口頭貢獻顯示他們做了課前準備；但對於某些人而言，沉默表示他們理解、同意老師或是表現了他們做了充分的課前準備。另一方面，老師在提問後所留的簡短等待時間以及老師急於回答自己問題的行為，使得學生認為沒有回答老師問題的必要。
本研究的結論是：大量的老師控制問題類型及簡短的等待時間導致了學生的沉默並且降低了學生參與課堂互動的意願。語言教師同時也被建議應該提出多種的問題類型並且等待足夠的時間，好讓學生能思考並且回答老師的問題。

The phenomenon of students' silence in the classroom has drawn increasing attention in discourse studies. Most studies investigated students' participation or non-participation with data collected through surveys, interviews and classroom observation, but very few studies examined the effects of teacher's questioning and wait time on students' silence with real classroom discourse data. This study explores and interprets students' silence in terms of teacher's questioning behavior and wait time after different types of questions asked in a high-school foreign language classroom. The data were seven lessons video-recorded from one beginning-level Japanese class in a private senior high school. Additional data included students' responses to open questions and an interview with the teacher. Through the use of Tsui's (1992) and Weng's (2009) elicitation types from a Conversation Analysis (CA) approach, this study aims to find out how two variables, teacher's question types and wait time after each question type, may influence the features of students' responses and their motivation to answer the questions.
The findings are as follows:
1. Pseudo, Elicit:inform, and Understanding Checking questions were frequently asked by the teacher while Elicit:agree, Elicit:clarify, Elicit:repeat, and Elicit:confirm questions were used less frequently. It reveals that the teacher intended to transmit knowledge instead of creating interaction with the students.
2. The average length of the teacher's wait time after all question types was 0.9 seconds. Elicit:inform and Elicit:agree had the longest wait time but the average length was about 1 second. The length of teacher's wait time did not vary with question types. For both instructional question types and communicative question types, the teacher waited for about the same period of time.
3. The students took the most speech turns after Pseudo and Elicit:repeat questions, while they took the least speech turns after Understanding Checking and Elicit:agree questions. After Elicit:inform and Elicit:clarify questions, the students still took about 40% of the speech turns.
4. The students used short and simple responses to the teacher's questions. Only after Wh-inform questions did the students give longer and more complex responses but overall, the teacher-student interactions tended to be brief. In addition, the teacher often took the speech floor after her own questions. However, if the teacher gave a statement or acknowledgement after an evaluation in her follow-up turn, the students would extend their speech turns when responding to the teacher.
The students showed both positive and negative reactions to their silence in the classroom. For some students, making a verbal contribution was a way to display their preparedness. But for others, silence could mean understanding, agreeing with the teacher, or a sign of preparation. On the other hand, the insufficient wait time left by the teacher after the questions and the teacher's eagerness to answer her own questions gave the students an impression that they did not need to give any response to the teacher's questions.
This study concludes that the high percentage of teacher-controlled question types and insufficient wait time resulted in students' silence and decreased their motivation for verbal interaction in the classroom. It is suggested that language teachers should vary their question types and give students sufficient wait time to think over and to answer teacher's questions.

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