A Study On Instructional Directives Of Junior High School English Teachers

Instructional directive in English classroom has captured close and wide attention of numerous researchers so far.As an essential component of classroom interaction between teachers and students,classroom instruction can not only maintain classroom activities(Shen,2020),but also serve as language input for students’ English learning(Qian,2019).Generally speaking,the junior high school English high-quality class has complete teaching content,wonderful activities,and relatively formal use of instructional directives by teachers,and good classroom effects can be achieved.It is worth learning by teachers to find out their own shortcomings in the use of classroom instructions,and finally promote the classroom teaching effect.This study investigates classroom directive use from the videos of “The 13 th National Junior High School English High-Quality Classes”.The emphasis is particularly put on analyzing common features of 10 teachers’ use of directives in syntactic level,their use of direct and indirect strategies,and speech functions of these directives on account of Speech Act Theory,Comprehensible Input Hypothesis Theory and Interaction Hypothesis Theory.Specific research is carried out according to the following research questions:1.What are the syntactic features of directives used by junior high school English teachers in high-quality classes?2.What are the features of strategy use of directives used by junior high school English teachers in high-quality classes?3.What are the speech functions of directives used in high-quality classes of junior high school English teachers?After analyzing the data,it is concluded by this study that(1)In terms of sentence structure,junior high English teachers use simple sentence directives to make sure students understand without wasting time.Complex and compound sentence instructions are used to provide more detailed activity requirements,but the use of subordinate clauses and conjunctions can increase the difficulty for students to understand.In terms of sentence function,teachers mostly use direct and short imperative sentences to directly ask students to complete tasks.Interrogative sentences pay more attention to strengthening the interaction between teachers and students,enlivening classroom atmosphere.Declarative directives tend to be mild and polite to deliver directives.(2)Junior high school English teachers prefer direct strategies to indirect ones when giving directives in high-quality classes.In general,the use of direct strategies make the directive show what students need to do or the teacher’s intention more directly.Adopting indirect strategy helps make directives more euphemistic and more conducive to the construction of harmonious and equal teacher-student relationship in class.(3)Functionally,classroom directives given by teachers are to express commands,requests and suggestions.The command directive is serious,but short and forceful,aiming to improve teaching efficiency.Directives with suggestion function have the euphemistic tone,which makes them easier for students to accept and complete assigned tasks.Request instructions are polite and make students feel respected.In view of the above findings,this research puts forward some suggestions for English teaching in the end:(1)Use polite simple sentences and questions as instructional directives to achieve a better classroom atmosphere.(2)Combine the use of direct and indirect strategies according to different purposes of using directives.(3)Use more polite instructions with request,suggestion function.(4)Consider different syntactic features,use of strategies and speech functions of classroom directives,and avoid using only one kind of instruction in class.(5)Use instructional directives which are appropriate,understandable or at a level slightly higher than most students’ English language level to provide more chances for students to output and to complete the meaning negotiation between teachers and students.