A Study On The Classroom Speech Acts And Roles Of Primary School English Teachers

Education originates from human communication activities and is based on language in essence.Educational practice depends on language very much.People use language to carry out educational activities.For classroom teaching,teachers often rely on speech acts to exert influence on students.From the perspective of speech act theory,this is the embodiment of the performativity of teachers’ speech act,which also means that teachers’ language literacy is related to the efficiency of classroom teaching.Through the literature research,we can know that the importance of teachers’ speech acts is further highlighted in language teaching.If we can reveal the characteristics of teachers’ speech acts in class,we can provide a reference for teachers’ teaching practice,and promote teachers to make good use of the performativity of speech acts.In addition,the process of teachers’ consciously use of speech acts is also the process of shaping their own roles.Through the study of teachers’ speech acts,we can know what role teachers play in classroom teaching.In this study,six English classes in Shanghai are selected as the research examples.They are from "excellent lesson" appraised by the Ministry of Education of China in "One Teacher One Optimal Lesson,One Lesson One Famous Teacher" in 2018.The research process can be divided into two parts as a whole,using the combination of statistical analysis and text analysis.First of all,observe the classroom videos of these lessons,and use Flanders interaction analysis system to code and record the teachers’ classroom speech acts.On the basis of the results of statistical records,matrix analysis and ratio analysis are carried out to show the basic characteristics of primary school English teachers’ classroom speech acts from the aspects of stable lattice,positive integration lattice and defective lattice,as well as the status,type and tendency of teachers’ speech acts.Secondly,due to the defects of Flanders’ interactive analysis,it is impossible to further show the specific teaching situation and details of speech acts.Therefore,it is necessary to analyze the transcribed text combined with classroom videos to interpret the role information of teachers’ speech acts.The basis of teacher’s classroom role lies in students.Excellent classroom should be interactive to ensure that students have enough language input and output.According to the theory of mediated learning experience,the teacher is the mediator of students’ learning,and the most important mediated tool is language.So,on the whole,the role of the teachers in the excellent lesson is the mediator with language as the main tool.According to different teaching situations and students’ experience,the so-called "mediator" will be divided into more specific classroom roles.According to the classification of teachers’ language materials in class according to their functions,we can find that the functions of teachers’ speech acts in class mainly focus on the organization of classroom activities,the teaching of curriculum knowledge and the expression of emotions.Therefore,in the specific situation of lesson cases,the performativity of teachers’ classroom speech acts causes them to play these different classroom functions,thus playing the classroom roles of organizer,initiator and promoter.