A Comparative Study Of Teacher Directives In Junior High School

Teacher directives act a pivotal role in language teaching,which is related to teachers’ classroom teaching effect and students’ learning efficiency.Researchers at home(Guo Linhua: 2005,Wang Jing: 2011,ect.)and abroad(Parrot:1993,Oliveira: 2009,ect)conducted a great deal of research on teacher directives.These studies described the reasons for the ineffectiveness of teacher directives and proposed the suggestions for the improvement.However,due to the lack of the standardized operating procedures,these research results are difficult to be applied in the actual teaching.In view of this situation,this thesis describes and compares the features of English teacher directives in demonstration classes and ordinary classes of junior high school,and tries to put forward standardized operation principles of the teacher directives.Therefore,this thesis explores two questions:(1)What are the features of English teacher directives in junior high school?(2)What should be the operation principles of English teacher directives in junior high school?Through the description and the comparative analysis of two kinds of classroom teacher directives: National Junior High School English Demonstration Classes Competition and English ordinary classes in one junior high school,this thesis summarizes the common features of the teacher directives and proposes the operation principles of the teacher directives in junior high school.The common features of teacher directives in junior high school are as follows:(1)teachers are more inclined to use direct directives in teacher directives;(2)teachers tend to use the first person “we/us” and the modal verbs “would/could/shall/may” in lexical features;(3)on sentence structures features,teachers use four kinds of sentence structures as teacher directives: “(You)VP(Please)”,“Let’s + V”,Declaratives and Declaratives + Tag Questions and “Could/Would/Can you…?”;(4)on discourses,teachers focus more on two strategies: Comprehension Check and Self-repetition.According to the comparative analysis of the features of teacher directives,this thesis proposes the operation principles of teacher directives in junior high school:(1)Teacher directives should be direct and as concise as possible.(2)The lexical expressions of teacher directives should take the intelligibility of the lexis into consideration to indicate the principle of student-centered.(3)What kind of sentence structures should be chosen as directives should consider that whether the structure is beneficial to enhance the classroom interaction or not.(4)On discourses,the expressions of Comprehension Check should be clear and effective.Based on the findings,the thesis presents the following implications for teaching:(1)In junior high school,English teachers should have the consciousness of teacher directives and know the importance of teacher directives in classroom teaching.(2)Teachers should master and follow the principle of teacher directives in English classroom.(3)Teachers should consider the choice of the lexis and the sentence patterns,and try to meet students’ emotional needs.(4)Teachers should use enlightening directives to broaden students’ thinking and to present the teaching idea of student-centered.