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A Study Of Interaction Patterns And Its Influence On Students' Participation In College Enlish Classroom

Posted on:2008-01-22Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:W J HongFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360215984980Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
English teaching is an interactive language activity. Researches haveproved that classroom interaction plays an important role in improvingstudents' English proficiency and its impact upon the evaluation ofteaching effectiveness has been fully recognized. With the wideimplementation of the communicative approach, English languageteachers in China have begun to realize the importance of classroominteraction in English learning in recent years. In order to improvestudents' English communicative proficiency, the teachers are turningtheir previous "telling" teaching model to a collaborative learningapproach which can provide students with more classroom participationopportunities.This study aims to investigate the interaction patterns and its effectson learners' participation in college English classroom. Guided by somerelated theories such as Input Hypothesis, Interactive Hypothesis andSocial Interactive Theory, the author observed four second year intensivereading classes of non-English majors from a university in Hunanprovince, with the help of observation checklist and face to faceinterviews with some teachers. 200-minute lessons were audio taped andlater transcribed verbatim for conversation analysis.This study has found: (1) the main classroom interaction patterns are IRF pattem and group work; (2) both pattems can improve classroominteraction, and based on IRF pattern, there appeared some more complexinteraction patterns: "IRFR?', "I1R1[I2R2(...)]F", "IR1F1/R2F2...", whichcan be considered as variations of the IRF pattern, but these variationswill help the students to be more active in classroom interaction. (3)result from various classroom constraints, teachers are the authority ofturn allocation, and they decide who is going to take the turn, when totake the turn, and what to talk about. So students' turn-taking behavior isoften affected by the teachers' turn allocation techniques. With regard tothe turn allocation, the teachers' solely use of one technique isdisadvantageous for students' equal participation. Besides, teachers'action zone during the teaching process will also lead to unequalparticipation, however, group solicit can better involve all the students toparticipate in interaction.This study indicates that effective classroom interaction patterns andreasonable turn allocation techniques will enhance students' participationin classroom interaction, and then improve teachers' teaching efficiency.What's more, it is particularly significant in providing professionalteacher trainers with real data for subsequent target-oriented teacherdevelopment on teaching.
Keywords/Search Tags:classroom interaction pattern, turn distribution, learner's participation
PDF Full Text Request
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