Analysis Of Classroom Discourse In Intensive English Reading Classes

Discourse analysis has been studied extensively and has become a topical focus inthe field of linguistics and educationalists. Although there has been an increasingamount of studies on classroom discourse in the world, little has been conducted inChina to examine the characteristics of discourse structures and discourse patterns inChinese context. Classroom discourse analysis is an objective approach to classroomresearch, which aims to describe the teaching and learning processes and illustrate thejoint contributions of teachers and students. This thesis analyzes the classroomdiscourse from the following four aspects: IRF (Initiation-Response-Feedback) structure,turn-taking, the amount of teacher and student talk and frequency and types of teacherquestion, based on the data collection of the live classroom transcripts of intensivereading classes. From the results, the following features are derived: (1) The discoursestructures found in classrooms are very complicated though IRF structure still exists; (2)The teacher's turn-length is much longer than that of the students'. As for turn-takingbehaviors in classrooms, the teacher usually nominates a speaker by name, by a look, orsometimes by pointing. Of course students do frequent self-selection; (3) The amount ofteacher talk surpasses that of the student talk in most cases; (4) The teacher usesreferential questions more frequently than the display ones. In addition, the authordiscusses the influences of the features mentioned above on the students' acquisition oflanguage.