The Application Of Politeness Principle To Teacher-Student Interaction In ELT

Teacher-student interaction has been a troublesome issue in China's ELT classroom teaching. In order to make a further probe into this problem, this thesis attempts to study whether or not Politeness Principle (PP) can be applied to direct classroom interactions between teacher and students or among students themselves. In the first place, students need to be activated in language learning. Only when they are motivated, could interaction be possible. Meanwhile, polite teacher talk and teacher's use of polite strategy implicitly affect students' awareness of being polite, so that they will follow the principles of politeness unconsciously, eventually leading to successful communication.Any research should be based upon a specific frame of reference in terms of subject matter, methodology and analysis. In the first two chapters of this thesis, it aims to build up a system to support this research, and this system consists of the theory of politeness principle and classroom interaction. General introductions have been made for these two areas, and pragmatic differences of conceptual "politeness" between Chinese and English are also discussed. From research review, it is evident that politeness principle is likely to and necessary to work for classroom interaction, so as to enhance teaching and learning effectiveness.According to the relevant theories, a survey has been conducted among English teachers. 110 questionnaires, each of which contains 18 questions, have been delivered and 100 collected. It shows from the collected questionnaires that the main difficulties of classroom interaction lie in students' passive participation and collaboration. In response to this, it is assumed that the pragmatic theory of politeness principle can help direct the practice of classroom interaction, so in chapter 4 an interactive English teaching model based on politeness principle has been proposed. In this model, teachers will first demonstrate through multi-media technology what those principles are and what may happen if violated. Not until they fully understand and show interest, could teaching move on as scheduled. In the process of teaching, teachers apply polite rules and polite strategies in classroom interaction, raising students' politeness awareness. The application of politeness principles into this teaching model will be able to help teachers activate students' interaction more actively and effectively.In order to testify this hypothesis, an experiment has been designed and carried out within 6 natural classes of same level (3 of them serve as experimental group, the other 3as control group). 3 teachers have been assigned to the teaching, each taking 2 classes (one from experimental group, the other from control group). Research data depends much on post-experimental questionnaires, teachers' classroom observation and interviews. Since the experiment manipulates the application of politeness principle as independent variable, which means the experimental classes are treated with politeness principles while the control classes follow their usual ways of teaching, teachers will have to observe students closely and take notes about their response and behavior changes. After the experiment, data will be collected from the post-experimental questionnaires, teachers' observation and interviews, and analyzed both cross-sectional (between experimental group and control group) and longitudinally (looking for changes over time). The post-experimental questionnaires will cover: 1) students' response and feelings towards effectiveness of interaction;2) the influence of teachers' politeness principle upon students;3) any changes rested on students' abilities of exercising Politeness Principle for daily communication.It is well concluded, from the experiment data analysis that rightly applying politeness principle in English classroom teaching helps to enhance interaction among the teacher and students, since post-experimental subjects claim they are more interested in and satisfied with the new teaching model. Students are more willing to interact with each other or with the teacher since they are no more worried to be teased or mocked at. Instead, teachers' politeness has encouraged them to behave properly and interact appropriately. Furthermore, influenced by their teachers, students tend to use polite language in interactions more frequently than before. Therefore, we hold that the right application of politeness principles in English classroom teaching can help direct and test classroom interaction so as to improve interactive efficiency. Teachers should develop themselves awareness of being polite and follow politeness principle in classroom interaction. On one hand, they should teach students directly what polite rules or principles are. On the other hand, they may indirectly guide and influence students by their polite strategies in the classroom interaction. Only in this way, can the final goal of communicative abilities could be reached.