An Analysis On Interaction Features Of EFL Teacher Talk

Studies have shown that teacher-student conversational interaction plays a significant role in second language acquisition. Analyzing the interaction features of teacher talk and seeking the relationship between interaction and language acquisition have become the focus of second language acquisition and language teaching research in the past two and three decades. However, their subjects are all professional teachers and student teachers as a particular group, are seldom studied. Student teachers of normal universities are both advanced language learners and also novice teachers of classroom. Analysis of the interaction behaviors and their corresponding benefits and problems in the intern classroom can provide some useful information for teacher education, esp. in developing student teachers' pragmatic ability and communication strategies in classroom.With the purposes above and on the basis of relevant theories and existing framework, the present study mainly discusses the six interaction features of the student teachers: patterns of interaction, topic management, distribution and frequency of teachers' and students' turns, question types(i.e. display questions and referential questions) and distribution, teachers' feedback (simple feedback; feedback with a comment; feedback with a follow-up question), negotiation and its influence on learners' immediate output. Through audio-taping, transcription and analysis of the classroom talk, the present study attempts to illustrate some interaction features of the student-teachers' English classrooms in Chinese high school context. And the results are as follows:1) Generally speaking, the pattern of I-R-F is mainly adopted, that is to say, the teacher initiates a question, the students follow a response, and then the teacher gives a feedback; 2) the topics are dominated by the teachers: planned topics are used to check understanding of the text content and grammar points; unplanned topics are adopted by the teachers to elicit more output, which encourages the students to take initiative in the classroom and increase their interest in language study; 3) the ratio of teachers' and students' turns is roughly in balance, calculated in the way that some discussions, pair work and procedures are included as students' turns; yet student-initiated interactions are rare; 4) in the aspects of question types and distribution, display questions take more than 80 percent, while referential questions account for less than one third. Most of the questions serve as confirmation of text content instead of real communication. Fewer questions also mean fewer interactions in the classroom; 5) with regards to feedback, student teachers use more simple feedback than feedback which induces further interaction. 6) the study of negotiation shows that its functions are acknowledged by both the teacher and the students. Negotiations can provide comprehensible input and push output, which develop students' interlanguage.The above findings provide instruction for the student teachers. On the one hand, student teachers should put more emphasis on classroom interaction, creating the cognitive and affective environment conducive for study. On the other hand, the results are able to offer insights into language teacher education in normal university, with the purpose of optimizing the language teacher education in China. English specialized courses should be strengthened, especially the course in speaking, and teaching practicum in secondary schools should be extended.