A Study Of Tearcher Talk Of English Major In English Intensive Reading: A Case Study

Teacher talk has been one of the focuses of language teaching research for many years. Teacher talk refers to the language teachers used in organizing classroom activities and delivering knowledge in foreign language classroom. The current study aims to explore the features of teacher talk in EFL classrooms in China, with the specific purpose to provide some pedagogical suggestions to the Chinese English teachers on what types of teacher talk would be beneficial to learner's language acquisition and therefore would be employed in classroom teaching. The subjects involved were six teachers and 200 students from the Faculty of International Studies of Henan Normal University. Six teachers'teaching processes were audio-recorded and the recorded materials were transcribed into written language to be used for analysis. Meanwhile, they were asked to respond to the questionnaire on English classroom teacher talk.The findings are summarized as follows:With regard to the amount of teacher talk and student talk in the six EFL classrooms under investigation, the study indicates that there is a preference of teacher talk over student talk.As to the frequency of the use of display questions and referential questions, display questions are reported as being used more frequently than referential questions.In terms of the frequency of three types of interactional modification, the study indicates a significant use of comprehension checks, followed by confirmation checks, while clarification checks are the least frequently used ones.As for the teacher's positive feedback, the study demonstrates that repetition of the answers and praise is the most frequently used, and the second frequently used is simple praise in our study.