The Analysis Of TT In TCSL Intensive Reading Class For The Beginners

Teacher talk (TT) is not only a main method with which teachers communicate with their students in class, but also a key means to control the behavior of the students. A Russian educationist ever mentioned that the quality of TT, to a great extent, determines the efficiency of students' mental work in class. Just as the proverb goes, a workman must sharpen his tools if he is to do his work well, therefore, teachers must perfect their TT. In the class where teachers speak the target language TT plays an important role in carrying out the teaching plan and delivering comprehensible input to the students, which influences their second language acquisition directly (Liu Xun). In other words, the quality of TT exerts a tremendous influence on the quality of language teaching, even determines the success or failure of classroom instruction.TT includes TT of classroom management, TT for instruction, TT as feedback and code-switching between Chinese and English. This work deals with TT in Teaching Chinese as Second Language (TCSL) intensive reading class for the beginners, with a view to improving the present state of TT. Ten teachers are chosen from three universities in Xiamen, who fall into the experienced and inexperienced, five respectively. The classroom observation, recording and questionnaire are adopted in this work to analyze the amount and the speed of TT, sentence length, the reappearance of new words, the introducing and conducting of the extra-syllabus vocabularies. Moreover, some interactive strategies such as questioning, feedback, interactive modification and code-switching are also studied.TT of those experienced teachers takes on certain characteristics through years of teaching practice. The conclusions drawn from this research are as follows: they speak large amount of target language at a steady speed; they repeat using new words more; they can control over the introducing of extra-syllabus vocabularies and handle them with ease; they use more sentences of 5 characters on average; they ask more conference questions; they offer more positive feedback with comments and encouragement; they carry on meaning negotiation with clarification request; they have a good awareness of code-switching. The collected data and conclusion in the present work, which can reflect the temporary situation of TT in TCSL class for the beginners, would be valuable materials for further researchers. Consequently, researchers will focus more on the study of TT, and the ultimate aim is to enhance the quality of TCSL teachers and to make use of the precious instruction time in class with efficiency.