The Influence Of Teachers' Feedback On Classroom Interaction

For foreign language learners, the classroom is a main environment for the acquisition of foreign languages, especially for Chinese students with the native language quite different from English and relatively rare opportunity to speak and practice English outside classroom. Hence teachers are an important source of input in the course of foreign language teaching and learning.As both an important factor in the process of classroom English teaching and interaction and a kind of language input, teacher feedback has increasingly drawn the attention of educators and linguistic researchers. If properly used, feedback can stimulate students'enthusiasm, encourage their participation, and thus create a good classroom interaction and help to improve their language skills.Many scholars and researchers have given feedback their own definitions from different perspectives. To sum up, in general, feedback can be defined as anything the teacher, native speaker or interlocutor provides after the speaker finishes his utterance, which can be written, verbal, or non-verbal. In this thesis, the definition of teacher feedback is summarized as follows: the verbal or non-verbal comment or information provided by the teacher to the student about his performance in the learning task, with the aim to facilitate learning and motivate students. And the verbal teacher feedback is more focused.Also, researchers have used different terms to distinguish different types of feedback from different perspectives, such as verbal or non-verbal, direct or indirect, explicit or implicit, etc. And in this thesis, the emphasis would be put on the distinction between positive and negative feedback, prompt and delayed feedback, and accuracy-focused and fluency-focused feedback.As for the functions of teacher feedback, it can be concluded that teacher feedback can not only facilitate learning in the ways of correcting, adding and giving knowledge, but can arouse interest, reduce tension, motivate students, extend learning opportunities and in the long-run, lead students to find and correct mistakes autonomously. What will be put emphasis on in this thesis are the functions and effects of teacher feedback of native and Chinese English teachers on classroom interaction.With the development of economic globalization and international exchanges as well as the enhancement of the importance of English and the establishment of English institutions, in China, students have more chance to learn from and communicate with teachers from English speaking countries. As there obviously exist differences in the educational ideas, teaching styles and standards between the native English teachers and the Chinese English teachers, there is difference between the teaching atmosphere, teaching effects, students'participation and reaction and the classroom interaction between teacher and students. Thus, how to take the advantage of both native and Chinese English teachers'feedback, better facilitate students'learning and improve students'language and communicative competence is a question that shall not be overlooked.This thesis is designed to compare the characteristics and advantages of native and Chinese English teachers'feedback in the classroom, and analyse the role teacher feedback plays in the classroom interaction.In specific, the present study is designed to answer the following questions:(1) What are the respective advantages and features of native and Chinese English teachers'feedback in English classroom? (The amount of feedback, the focus of feedback, when to give feedback, and the type of feedback)(2) How do these differences between native and Chinese English teachers'feedback influence the classroom interaction, such as students'participation and speaking opportunity?(3) What are Chinese learner's preferences and opinions towards teacher feedback?Through classroom observation, audio-recording analysis, and interviews concerning the characteristics of both native and Chinese English teachers'feedback, this thesis aims to sum up how to make better use of teacher feedback which suits students'characteristics and preferences and can form a better classroom interaction, and to provide some suggestions on how to facilitate English teaching and learning, and what should be noted here is that the focus of comparison is not to compare and decide whose feedback is better or worse, but through comparison, to conclude the advantages of each feedback on certain aspects and hence sum up a more appropriate and efficient way of giving feedback to arouse students'interest, build an active classroom interaction and facilitate learning.Through the analysis of the data, it is found that although both native and Chinese English teachers use various feedback techniques in hope to achieve the goal of encouraging students and promote the classroom interaction, there exists respective characteristics in the aspects of the amount, the type, the time and the focus of teacher feedback, and hence have their respective influence on the classroom interaction. For example, as for the type, both native and Chinese teachers provide more positive feedback than negative one, and native teachers'positive feedback is more than that of the Chinese teachers'. And feedback, especially in the form of simple approval,"repeat and praise"and confirmation checks and clarification requests encourage the students much and build a relaxing interaction atmosphere.All in all, due to multiple reasons such as cultural, societal and educational, native and Chinese English teachers hold different opinions on the focus of language teaching and learning, thus, their choice of teacher feedback and teaching activities differ accordingly. Combined with students'preference and opinions expressed in the interview, some implications and suggestions on teacher feedback are given; including 1) Provide positive feedback and friendly negative feedback with respect for students'dignity. 2) Combine prompt and delayed feedback together. 3) Combine form-focused and content-focused feedback together. 4) Integrate different kinds of teacher feedback. 5) Pay attention to the application of non-verbal feedback.