A Study On Teacher Talk In ESL Classroom From The Perspective Of English Majors

For most second language (L2) learners especially in China, it is the case that classroom is almost the only place where they can be exposed to the target language. Teacher talk, as an external condition for language learning, plays an important part in creating favorable linguistic environments for learners to engage in. Teacher talk (TT) is of crucial significance in the whole English teaching system. The quantity and quality of TT in English is one of the essential factors contributing to learners' English learning, especially improvement of their output. Although in recent years L2 researchers have realized the significance of teacher speech in classroom, in China most of the few relevant empirical studies were conducted in middle school classroom or non-English majors' EFL (English as a foreign language) classroom, while there is hardly any research about teacher talk in English majors' language classroom settings. Considering these, the author in the present study mainly sets out to describe the input features of teacher talk in English majors' classroom in Chinese university.For the sake of analysis, teacher talk is investigated in terms of seven aspects, namely, amount of TT, choice of language, rate of speech, variety of vocabulary, syntactic features, self-repetition as a modification of discourse, and simplification and elaboration. The data collecting was conducted in University of Electronic Science and Technology of China Zhongshan Institute with 4 teachers and their 200 students or so as subjects of this study. By means of classroom observation, audio-recording and questionnaire, the study yields the following findings.Teachers dominate the classroom by taking up most of the talking time and providing little chance for students to perform. The TL (target language) English is used for more than two thirds of the teacher talking time. Speech rate of teacher talk is relatively fast with 154 wpm on average while a low type-token ratio (0.16 on average) indicates a not diverse variety of vocabulary use. As for syntactic features, teachers tend to use longer utterances (10.12 on average) and more subordinate clauses (190 on average), which implies a relatively high level of syntactic complexity in T-unit methodology. Self-repetition as a modification of discourse is frequently used and teacher talk is slightly more often simplified than elaborated. It is found that the results of our study show some unique characteristics of English majors' classroom. Generally speaking, for English learners the linguistic features in terms of input quality are satisfactory as basic comprehension and added syntactic complexity are guarantee. However, some results are unsatisfactory because of the limited vocabulary range, fast speed and frequent self-repetition, which to a certain extent reduce the quality of TL input.The results of the present study above can offer insights into pedagogy, namely, teachers are reminded to be more self-conscious of the linguistic features of their speech in classrooms and try to create rich and optimal language environments through optimizing their classroom TT for students' language learning. As far as this study is concerned, some pedagogical suggestions are provided. For example, teachers are expected to decrease teacher talking time (TTT), creating more opportunities for students to speak; teachers are supposed to organize various classroom activities and extend topics beyond the textbook in discussion and they also need to become more familiar with students' language proficiency so as to adjust their speech in classroom.