On Spoken English Classroom Interaction In Secondary Foreign Language Schools

Classroom interaction has drawn increasing attention in L2 research. During the last two decades, many researchers have contributed to the study and reached a consensus that there is no cause-and-effect relationship between interaction and L2 acquisition; rather, classroom interaction can create an optimum environment for L2 acquisition. Two related but different types of interactionist theories arise: one is psycholinguistic interactionist theories, which mainly advance the role of interaction as a linguistic environment on learners' internal mechanism; the other is social interactionist theories which are more social in orientation. It treats interaction as a typical social event which helps learners participate in their own second language development. Although psycholinguistic interactionist theories and social interactionist theories address the impact of interaction on L2 acquisition from different perspectives, both of them deal with the positive effect of classroom interaction as an external environment on learners' internal mechanism. Based on the interactionist theories of L2 research and spoken language teaching practice in foreign language schools, the author attempts to explore how we teachers can motive learners' participation in the oral English classroom, and how we can maximize our spoken language teaching efficiency so as to facilitate learners' oral English learning.This thesis consists of five parts. Chapter One is a literature review. In this chapter psycholinguistic and social interactionist theories are briefly reviewed, then the definition of interaction and its features are expounded. Chapter Two is mainly about theoretical background of spoken language teaching. Several important issues are discussed: the characteristic of spoken English, the nature of conversation and the study of "input" and "output". In Chapter Three, teacher-student classroom interaction, interaction among students and learner-content interaction are...