A Comparative Study Of Teacher Directions Between Novice And Experienced English Teachers In Senior High School

Teacher directions are an important part of teacher discourse.And it is also a vital medium for teachers to organize teaching and students’ language learning.At present,there are many researches on teacher directions studied by educational researchers abroad and in China,but there are just a few researches on teacher directions in Xinjiang,especially for teacher directions of English teachers in Xinjiang senior high schools.Based on these above,this study tries to probe into and answers the following two questions:1)What are similarities and differences in the use of types,forms,functions and strategies of teacher directions between novice and experienced teachers?2)What are the factors causing the differences in the use of teacher directions between novice and experienced teachers?For the sake of solving the above questions,this study adopts the method of multi-case study based on the data collection ways of recording and interview,and takes six English teachers from No.X Senior High School in Urumqi,Xinjiang as the research objects,which makes a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences in the use of teacher directions between novice teachers and experienced teachers;subsequently,interviews with novice teachers,experienced teachers and students are implemented to probe into the factors causing the differences in two types of teachers’ use of directions.The general results of the study demonstrated that:1)The similarities in the use of teacher directions between novice and experienced teachers are as follows: in terms of types,two types of teachers both use large number of direct directions;in terms of forms,two groups of teachers prefer to use imperative sentences;on the aspect of functions,two types of teachers both tend to use command functions of teacher directions;as for strategies,two types of teachers are inclined to use comprehension check and self-repetition strategies to confirm students’ understandings for teacher directions.The differences in the use of teacher directions between novice and experienced teacher are as follows: on the aspect of types,experienced teachers use indirect directions more frequently than novice teachers;as for forms,novice teachers tend to use more ellipsis,while experienced teachers are better at using interrogative sentences;in terms of functions,experienced teachers are inclined to use request and suggestion functions of teacher directions.Finally,concerning strategies,novice teachers tend to use Chinese translation strategy,while experienced teachers are better at using various strategies such as exemplification and paraphrase.2)The factors causing the differences in the use of teacher directions between novice and experienced teachers are divided into internal factors and external factors.The internal factors are from the teachers themselves,mainly including the degrees of teachers’ understanding and emphasis on directions,teachers’ teaching experience,teachers’ language ability and teacherstudent relationship.The external factors are from the students themselves,mainly related to the students’ language level.