A Study Of Politeness Strategies Of Teacher Feedback In College EFL Classroom Interaction

Politeness, as an important topic in pragmatics, has been attached to great importance by many scholars since the 1970s. Politeness is the symbol of human civilization, the basic standard of human communication, and the prerequisite of human cooperation. Meanwhile, foreign language classroom, as an important place where teacher-student interactions happen, is also governed by this rule. Politeness is not only a universal phenomenon in language communication, but the reflection of teachers'self-cultivation. The quality of teacher talk depends on many factors, one of which is the quality of teacher feedback, which plays an important role in confirming correct information, correcting wrong information, consolidating the knowledge learnt, offering new information, and cultivating harmonious classroom atmosphere. Studies on politeness and teacher feedback respectively are numerous, but on combining the two are rare. This study is a try in this field, hopefully enriching the content of politeness studies from a theoretical viewpoint. The practical purpose is to improve the quality of teacher talk and the effectiveness of teacher feedback. Moreover, the current study plays a practical part in creating a positive, secure, light and harmonious classroom atmosphere, which in return will benefit students'learning.The present study adopts Brown & Levinson's politeness theory as the theoretical framework, and selects teacher feedback in college English classroom interaction for English majors as the object of analysis. It's a good combination of pragmatics and applied linguistics and offers a new perspective of studying teacher talk. Based on the analysis of enormous literature, the current study intends to find out types of feedback teachers frequently use and their characteristics, the present situation of teachers'use of politeness strategies in feedback, and influences of teachers'use of politeness strategies in feedback on students'affect and classroom interaction. All the data in this thesis come from the author's classroom observations and lecture transcripts of five teachers, and the questionnaires of 210 students from Hebei University and Tangshan Teachers'college. Then the collected data are analyzed through statistics software SPSS 13.0 version.This thesis is made up of five chapters. Chapter 1 is the introductory part, which mainly describes background information, purpose and significance of the study, and organization of the thesis. Chapter 2 provides a literature review of the study, including previous studies on teacher feedback at home and abroad, and the theoretical framework of the present study—Brown & Levinson's politeness theory. Definitions, classifications, functions of teacher feedback, the concept of face, face threatening acts (FTAs), and politeness strategies are discussed in detail. Chapter 3 introduces research methodology. Chapter 4 offers a description and an analysis of the data collected in classroom observations and questionnaires, and gives a detailed discussion of them based on four research questions. Chapter 5 is the conclusion part, in which the author gives a summary of the major findings of the present study, the pedagogical implications and limitations. Some suggestions for future study are put forward as well.