A Survey Of English Teachers’ Classroom Discourse In Senior High Schools

Teachers’ classroom discourse is the speech that teachers use in class, which hasa great influence on teaching and students’ language acquisition. For the studentslearning English in China, English language teaching (ELT) classroom is the mainplace where English is involved and used, so English teachers’ classroom discourse isthe main source of students’ comprehensible language input. The quantity and qualityof teachers’ classroom discourse not only has effect on the classroom teaching, butalso plays an important role in students’ psychological, emotional state and theirlanguage acquisition. Therefore, more and more attention has been paid to theteachers’ classroom discourse. However, due to the heavy task and limited time, highschool English teachers think much of teaching content and objectives, while theimportance of their own classroom discourse is neglected. Therefore, the survey andstudy of English teachers’ classroom discourse in senior high schools is particularlynecessary.The study is conducted on the basis of Krashen’s Comprehensible InputHypothesis, Swain’s Comprehensible Output Hypothesis and Long’s InteractionHypothesis. Four English teachers and128students in High School Attached toShandong Normal University are selected as the research objects. Then corpora anddata are collected through classroom observation and recording, questionnaires andinterviews. The thesis tries to explore the state and features of English teachers’classroom discourse in senior high schools from four aspects: the amount of teachers’classroom discourse, teachers’ questioning, teachers’ feedback and teachers’interaction modification, in the hope of helping to improve teachers’ classroomdiscourse, English teaching and second language acquisition.After the survey and data analysis, the author gets the following results:(1)Teachers’ classroom discourse covers about57%of the whole class and Chinese ismoderately used. The amount of teachers’ classroom discourse is affected by manyfactors, such as course type, students’ English level and teacher’s individual features.(2) English teachers in senior high schools prefer to pose display questions instead of referential questions. Nominating and chorus answering are teachers’ favorite choices,especially nominating. The post-question waiting time is appropriate and the length ofwaiting time varies according to different questions and students.(3) More positivefeedbacks are employed by teachers, and teachers often guide students to self-correct,if there is an error.(4) When interacting with students, teachers often usecomprehension checks. Meanwhile, confirmation checks and clarification checkssometimes are adopted to make the classroom closer to the natural languageenvironment.Based on the findings, the author puts forward the following suggestions toimprove teachers’ classroom discourse:(1) the learners-oriented concept should bereinforced and teachers’ role should be transformed accordingly.(2) The amount ofteachers’ classroom discourse should be adjusted flexibly based on the course type,students’ level and so on.(3) Referential questions should be added and questionsshould be allocated appropriately.(4) Positive feedbacks should be more concrete anddetailed, and teachers had better give students more chances of self-correcting.(5)Teachers should increase the amount of interaction modification so that students canproduce more output.