A Study On The Verbal Interaction Between Novice-Expert Teachers And Students In Primary School English Class

Teacher-student interaction has been in the limelight since the 8^thCurriculum Reform of Basic Education and has been mentioned continuously in numerous documents from Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China.Due to the cognitive characteristic and learning style of elementary students,high-quality verbal interaction between teachers and students is of great importance for the elementary students’English learning.Teacher-student verbal interaction,however,is less than ideal in the actual primary English class.The phenomena that primary English class is ruled by the voice of the teacher alone and in order to stress students’main role,student talk initiated by the teacher has been increasing shall not be ignored.The study of expert and novice teachers is the vital subject in the study of teacher growth.The conclusions made from the comparative analysis of expert and novice teachers’classroom verbal interaction could orient the growth of the novice teachers.This paper employs EFIAS as the research tool to analyze 10 videos of the actual primary English class.Via Mann-Whitney U test,matrix analysis,and curve analysis,the differences in teacher-student verbal interaction between expert and novice teachers has been studied.The conclusions are made as follows:（1）as for the class atmosphere,the class atmosphere of novice teachers is less harmonious than that of the expert teachers;（2）as for the class structure,compared with the“student-centered”class structure of the expert teachers,the class structures of the novice teachers are“teacher-centered”;（3）as for the influence mode,novice teachers prefer to exert direct influence on their students while expert teachers choose to indirectly influence their students;（4）as for the question types,novice teachers are more likely to ask close questions and less likely to propose open questions.Based on the conclusions above,this paper proposes the corresponding optimization strategies from feedback mode,talk ratio,talk category,and question types.The specific strategies are as follows:（1）as for the feedback mode,teachers shall give feedback catering for the specific student,thereby promoting the positive interaction between teachers and students.Teachers shall avoid the phenomenon that they just praise their students for the praise’s sake;（2）as for the talk ratio,teachers shall bear in mind that students are the center of the class,thus avoiding too much teacher participation;（3）as for the talk category,teachers shall simplify class instructions or demonstrate their instructions instead of giving lengthy explanations of the instructions in class;（4）as for the question types,teachers shall,based on the teaching objectives and learning condition of the class,properly allocate the ratios between close questions and open questions,avoiding overuse of the close questions.