English teaching and learning process aim to help the students improving their language abilities so that they able to communicate with integrity and responsible attitude to keep the relationship with others. To achieve this purpose, both teachers and students must build interactive communication during the learning process. However, there is still a condition where the students do not actively participate in the learning process even though they know that verbal participation is important in learning English. This study is held to identify the factors behind students’ lack of verbal participation in English class based on the questionnaire spread by the researcher to 26 students of grade VIII at one of the private schools in Jakarta. The results show five factors influencing students’ lack of verbal participation: teacher’s personality, lack of self-efficacy, lack of self-confidence, lack of preparation, and the fear of making mistakes and being laughed at by others. This study also suggested some teaching strategies that could be used by the teacher to improve students’ verbal participation in English class. Moreover, after knowing those factors, it is expected that the teachers could overcome and prevent this problem so that students could optimize the speaking ability given by God.