An Investigation And Analysis Of Teacher Talk In English Teaching Competition Of Universities For Nationalities

Discourse analysis has drawn much attention to a lot of linguists for a long time both in China and abroad. As one of important aspects, teacher talk is more popular among them, which is also a crucial aspect of teachers’classroom behaviors. Teacher talk is the language which teachers use to organize and manage the foreign language classrooms and implement their teaching plans. In a foreign language classroom, teacher talk is not only a tool which English teachers use to impart knowledge, organize and administrate the classroom teaching, but also a major source of learning target languages. As Nunan (1991) stated:"Teacher talk is very important, not only for the organization and management of the classroom but also for the processes of acquisition, because through language teaching that teachers either succeed or fail to accomplish their teaching plans". In terms of acquisition, teacher talk is the major source of comprehensible target language input which the learner is likely to receive" For many Chinese students, the English classroom is the main place to get language acquisition and target language. Therefore, teacher talk is crucial importance in foreign language teaching.Through the brief conclusion of the research on teacher talk both in China and abroad, the author finds that our study still focuses on concluding western countries’ results. For many years, our foreign language teaching has been paying more attention to the teaching methods and content but ignoring the practical process of the classroom and characters of teacher talk, in which the value and the characteristics of teacher talk are not highly considered in the Chinese context. This phenomenon is more prominent in the universities for nationalities.In views of above the reasons, it is necessary to explore the characteristics of teacher talk in universities for nationalities to help recognize what kind of teacher talk can promote the efficiency of classroom teaching, what kind of teacher talk is beneficial to nationality students’language acquisition, what kind of teacher talk badly impacts on teaching effect and quality and what languages should be improved and even ignored in classroom teaching. The study is based on the theories of Krashen’s Compressible Input Hypothesis, Swain’s Output Hypothesis and Long’s Interaction Hypothesis.The study chose ten teachers from The State Ethnic Affairs Commission’s competition as the subjects. Through the ways of audio-recording, observation and some questionnaires, the teacher talk was transcribed and then the data were analyzed. Moreover, the author also collected some data from the questionnaires to confirm and complete the results of teach talk. The research questions of the present study mainly include four parts from universities for nationalities teachers, namely, the amount of teacher talk and student talk, the frequency of display questions and referential questions, three kinds of interactional modifications, and teachers’feedback.The results of transcription and questionnaire are as follows:1. Teacher talk is far over student talk, teacher talk take up most of class time.2. As to the frequency of the mainly two kinds of questions, teachers use more display questions but less referential questions.3. In terms of frequency of the interactional modification, the data show that comprehension checks are most frequently used, and then followed by confirmation checks, and the last is clarification checks4. In terms of teachers’ feedback, the study demonstrates that almost all of teachers would rather use positive feedback than negative feedback, they hardly use negative feedback. But the effective ways of praising are rare.In terns of the study, some suggestions are provided for universities for nationalities.1. Decreasing teacher talk and changing teachers’ role; developing teachers’ comprehensive proficiency of language, using high quality and low number of teacher talk.2. Creating equal power relationships and harmonious classroom atmosphere3. Creating a positive and valid feedback...