A Study On Excellent Junior High English Teachers’ Talk In Reading Classes

Teacher talk is the language used by teachers in classroom teaching.Compared with other disciplines,English is distinct that activity organization,classroom management,teacher-student interactions and the transfer of teaching content are all accomplished through English,which means that English is both the teaching content and the teaching tool.English teachers’ talk has an important influence on the development of students’ language acquisition and the accomplishment of classroom teaching activities.So,it is necessary and meaningful to study English teachers’ talk.In recent years,more and more scholars have carried out a large number of studies on teacher talk,but most of these studies have focused on college English teachers’ talk,or on the comparison of teacher talk between Chinese and foreign teachers and between novice teachers and experienced teachers.Few Studies focus on teacher talk in junior middle school English classes.At present,there are few researches on teacher talk of excellent English teachers in junior middle schools.This study is based on Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis and Long’s interaction hypothesis,analyzing eight outstanding English teachers’ talk from the thirteenth Junior High School English Teaching Seminar through the reading class videos.This thesis makes a systematic analysis of the characteristics of excellent junior English teachers’ talk in aspects as teacher talk quantity,classroom questioning,teacher feedback and interactive modification in order to put forward some concrete suggestions on improving teacher talk quality and teaching efficiency for more junior middle school English teachers.There are four research questions in this study.First,how do excellent junior high school English teachers distribute talk quantity in reading class? Second,how do excellent junior high school English teachers promote the cultivation of students’ reading strategies through questioning? Third,what are the characteristics of excellent junior English teachers’ classroom feedback in reading class? Fourth,how do excellent junior high school English teachers promote students’ language input and output in interaction? The results show that the average teacher talk time of eight excellent teachers takes up 44% of the total classroom time.The proportion in this study is obvious lower than the data in previous studies by researchers,which shows that the eight English classes are student-centered.In terms of classroom questioning,in general,the number and frequency of display questions are higher than those of referential questions,but the gap is not obvious.59% of questions are in the form of‘wh-’ and 35 % are in the form of ‘yes/no’,which means that teachers consciously guide students to think deeply.In addition,excellent teachers focus on using logical and coherent questions to guide students to develop reading strategies in the reading process.In terms of feedback,all eight excellent teachers incline to using positive feedback rather than negative feedback to encourage students’ learning motivation and output richer information.In terms of interactive modification,comprehensible checks are used the most frequently,followed by clarification requests and confirmation checks.Excellent teachers are good at making use of comprehension checks to increase students’ comprehensible language input,and taking advantage of clarification checks to create chances for students to output the target language.Based on the above findings,this study puts forward some suggestions on how to improve teacher talk quality for improving classroom teaching efficiency.First,teachers should attach importance to teacher talk,and constantly polish their professional skills and the quality of teacher talk.Second,teachers should create teacher-student interactions and student-student interactions as much as possible to promote students’ acquisition of the target language.Third,teachers should be aware of the role they played in the classroom,taking good advantage of teacher talk and improve teaching efficiency.