An Investigation & Analysis Of Teacher Talk In English Classrooms Of High Vocational And Technical Colleges

Teacher talk is the language which teachers use to organize andmanage the L2/FL classrooms and implement their teaching plans(Nunan, 1991). It is one of the primary means of controlling learner'sbehavior and the most important source of learner's input. The amountand quality of teacher talk has a great effect on and is even a decisivefactor of the success or failure of classroom teaching (Hakansson, 1986).In recent years, most of the technical colleges in China are reformingFL teaching by employing "Task-based Language Teaching" or"Interaction Teaching Mode", but the classroom-based study ontechnical colleges has been lacking. In view of this, we think it importantto investigate the teacher talk in the EFL classrooms of technicalcolleges.The present study is based on the SLA theories, and theinvestigation and analysis of teacher talk is mainly carried out throughtwo dimensions: linguistic features and interactional ones of teacher talk.In consideration of this, by observing, video-recording and itstranscriptions, and using questionnaires we investigate and analyze thefeatures of teacher talk in the following four aspects: the amount ofteacher talk and the ratio of teacher talk between L1 and FL, thefunctional distribution of teacher talk, teacher's questions, and feedback. From this, we get a better understanding of technical colleges' non-nativeEnglish teacher talk.Concerning the amount of teacher talk and student talk in the eightclassrooms under investigation, the study indicates that there is apreference of teacher talk over student talk. In terms of L1 used by theteachers, all the teachers tend to use a lot of L1 while organizing andlecturing, and the code-switching between L1 and the target languageoften occurs. As to the six functions of teacher talk, most of the teachersmainly employ the two functions: presenting and eliciting, and organizingand evaluating come next, and socializing occasionally occurs andresponding is seldom used. We have also found out from this thesis thatthere is a priority of display questions over referential questions.Concerning the feedback, all the teachers prefer using "simple praises" and"repetition of responses followed by praises", though "praises followedby appraisal" is deemed to be a most effective method. Finally, theteachers incline to correct the students' errors once the students makemistakes, which is also mostly desired by the students.On the basis of the above findings, we come to a conclusion that theEFL classroom is mainly "teacher-centered" one, and some of theteachers haven't complemented the instructions according to the teachingplans, and their talk lacks planning, which isn't beneficial to the students'language development. Because of some objective and subjective factors, there are somelimitations in this thesis, and undoubtedly, the results obtained in thepresent study leave much to be verified. The author will try her best to dothe work better in the future.