A Research On Students' Discourse Power In Listening And Speaking Class Of Vocational College English

At present,most studies on classroom discourse power at home and abroad focus on the hegemony of teacher talk,or the insufficient teacher talk under the education system.There are few researches explore the causes of students' insufficient discourse power from the perspective of students.The domestic researches on English class discourse in vocational colleges mainly focus on how to construct an equal relationship between teachers and students.In general,there are relatively few researches on the status quo of students' discourse power in listening and speaking classes of vocational college English from the perspective of characteristics of vocational college students,and contributes to improve personnel training mode of vocational education.This study makes a research on the status quo of students' discourse power in listening and speaking classes of vocational college English.It tries to answer the following questions:(1)Is students' discourse power sufficient in listening and speaking classes of vocational college English?(2)What are the main causes of insufficient discourse power for students to give oral proficiency?(3)What are the strategies of increasing students' discourse power?The study is based on linguistic input and output theory,the interaction hypothesis and the affective filter hypothesis,combined with social cultural theory to make a sampling survey and interview on the learning characteristics of vocational college students.The subjects are 4-experienced English teachers and 182 freshmen of Grade 2016 of non-English major from a higher vocational college,Guangxi.In addition,the research instruments include interview,a questionnaire and classroom recording transcription,the following findings are found:(1)Students do not have sufficient discourse power in listening and speaking classes of vocational college English.They are willing to make good use of their discourse power,but actually,they are at a loss at what to say.Some of them prefer keeping silence or even taking the initiative to give up their discourse power.(2)The causes of insufficient discourse power for students as follows:the influence of teacher talk in class field;students' affective factors;social and cultural factors.(3)Strategies for teachers are:make teacher talk rationalized,question types diversified,adopt positive feedback,and provide more interaction in classroom;focus on students' affective factors especially their motivation,learning anxiety and attitudes in the teaching process;establish an equal and open "authority" status of teachers and adopt professional content-based teaching.This study has some implications for vocational college English teaching:Firstly,teachers should reasonably use teacher talk in the language teaching.Teachers should also increase interaction between teachers and students.In addition,teachers should pay attention to the question types and feedback,use more discourse feedback to increase students' meaningful language output.Secondly,teachers should reasonably use affective strategies to concern about students' affective factors.Teachers should not only build a good relationship between the teacher and the students,encourage and praise students,but also reduce students' learning anxiety,treat students'individual differences equally for helping students build up confidence and sense of achievement in learning Moreover,teachers should help students change their attitudes towards language learning.Finally,teachers' teaching should closely link with social and cultural life.