A Study Of The Influence Of Classroom T-S Interaction On Students' L2 Oral Production

Since the early 1980s, many studies have been conducted on the investigation of interaction in language development. Most of these studies have proved that interaction facilitates second language learning. As one important category of interaction, classroom interaction is one of the primary means by which learning is accomplished in classrooms. The purpose of the present thesis is to find out the general characteristics of Teacher-Student interaction in the Chinese EFL classroom and analyze how the main aspects of classroom T-S interaction (i.e. negotiation, teacher questions and teacher feedback) affect students'L2 oral production. Based on some related theories about interaction, and some researches on the relationship between interaction and language learning, the author has carried out a small-scale classroom observation in six second-year intensive reading classes of non-English majors from 2 universities in Northeast China, with the help of questionnaires delivered to the teachers and students in these six classes, and of face-to-face interviews with some teacher and student subjects. To make the statistics more reliable, another 20 teachers are involved in questionnaires and\or interviews. The study shows that the current T-S interaction in the Chinese EFL classroom is generally not favorable for students'L2 oral production. To be specific, as far as negotiation is concerned, the teachers are more likely to use comprehension checks than clarification requests and confirmation checks, although clarification requests are proved to be more favorable for students'production. Within confirmation checks, confirmation with trigger modified slightly outnumbers confirmation with trigger unmodified, although the latter...