An Analysis Of College English Classroom Discourse

With the development of the society and the international communication, college English teaching and learning is becoming more and more important, because college graduates with good command of every skill in English are badly needed in our society. English classroom teaching and learning is an important aspect of English teaching and learning. Classroom process research is a developing approach which investigates classroom L2 acquisition. The analysis of classroom discourse is a very important form which classroom process research has taken. The analysis of classroom discourse involving L2 learners illustrates the joint contributions of teacher and students, rather than focusing only on the teacher's language. Foreign language classroom researchers believe that a detailed study of classroom discourse can provide the foreign language teachers with a profound comprehension of teaching and learning.The present study focuses on college English classroom discourse. The data are collected in three college English classrooms of non-English majors at Qingdao University of Science and Technology. Through a detailed description and analysis of the collected data by referring to Sinclair and Coulthard's classroom discourse analysis model, Chaudron and Nunan's taxonomy of question types and Chaudron's taxonomy of speech modifications as well as close observation, problems like the patterns of the classroom discourse, types of teachers' questions, teachers' modification strategies and feedback are made clear and on the basis of which a few strategies for college English teachers are put forward by the author in order to improve college English teaching and learning.