The Politeness Of Teacher Feedback In College EFL Classes

Politeness is a common social phenomenon that can be found in every aspect of social interaction in which it plays important roles. The classroom is a unique communication context where highly regulated patterns of communication occur between teachers and students. Studying the teachers'politeness in classroom can lead us to better understanding of the classroom interaction.This thesis explores the teachers'politeness in one aspect of classroom interaction--teachers'feedbacks and tries to answer two questions: (1) What politeness strategies do college EFL teachers adopt when giving feedbacks in their classes? Are there any differences among politeness strategies adopted for students'different performances? (2) Why do teachers use politeness strategies in giving feedbacks?The present study combines qualitative study and quantitative study together. The data comes from the recording of six college EFL teachers'classes from five universities in Beijing, and a questionnaire survey is done to investigate the students'opinions on the effects of politeness strategies in teachers'feedbacks.Through the analysis of the teachers'class recordings, we find that teachers use various politeness strategies in their feedbacks to students, and for students'different performances the teachers'politeness strategies are also different. Three situations are classified according to students'performances in answering teachers'questions: 1) when students give right answers; 2) when students give wrong answers; 3) when students fail to give any answer. In feedbacks on students'right answers, the teachers'politeness strategies include: approving students'answers, repeating students'answer, praising students, showing gratitude. When students answer the questions wrongly, the teachers'politeness strategies include: softening the tone of speech, being vague, being indirect, conveying good will, and minimizing or avoiding disagreement, with various sub-strategies under them. When students can't give answers to the teachers'questions, the teachers'politeness strategies include: showing sympathy and understanding, conveying cooperation, and minimizing imposition, also with sub-strategies under them. We also find that female teachers tend to use more politeness strategies in classes than male teachers do. The reason why teachers adopt these politeness strategies is that the Chinese traditional classroom where the teachers are absolute authority is not beneficial to teaching and learning, and teachers'being polite is an important way to change this situation. Teacher's politeness can achieve this by its three functions in classroom teaching and learning: establishing positive classroom environment and lowering the students'anxiety, promoting classroom interaction, and establishing harmonious teacher-students relationship.The present study about politeness strategies adopted by college EFL teachers in their feedbacks for students is helpful for teachers to adequately understand their speech in classroom, realize the importance of politeness in teaching-learning process, and adopt more reasonable and effective communicative strategies in future to promote the teaching efficiency.