A Comparative Analysis Of Teacher Talk Between Novice And Expert Teachers In The EFL Classroom

Among the various classroom researches, teacher talk and teacher-student classroom interaction have always been the focus of teachers and researchers. Teacher talk, the speech made by teachers in classroom, is of crucial importance, not only for the organization of the classroom but also for the processes of L2 acquisition (Nunan 1991). The amount and quality of teacher talk in language classroom has a great effect on classroom teaching and is even a decisive factor of the success or failure of it (Hakansson 1986). With proper teacher talk, teachers can conduct designed activities to facilitate the learners'acquisition.Teacher talk plays an important role in language teaching. A great number of scholars (Chaudron 1983; Gaies 1977,1979; Henzl 1979; Long 1981,1983;) have made a lot of empirical researches on it. What's more, a large number of researches in SLA have brought to light the significance of "classroom interaction" since the 1980s (Allwright 1984; Ellis 1990; Long 1983; Swain 1985;). The results obtained from these researches show that teacher talk and classroom interaction have a close relationship to learners' target language acquisition process. However, up to now, researches on teacher talk in Western countries have tended to focus on the features of teacher talk only for language input purposes.In China, the related researches on teacher talk and classroom interaction have begun to catch the attention of a lot of people since the 1980s. However, most of the researches in China are not as convincing as those abroad and only a few have been conducted to examine the features of teacher talk and classroom interaction in Chinese context(赵晓红1998；王银全1999；周星,周韵2002).There is less research that empirically explores the impacts of teacher talk on middle school students' English learning proficiency in China. Moreover, few study stresses on the teacher talk between the novice and expert teachers in language classroom in high schools. Naturally, that's why the present study conducts and where the significance of the current study goes.Under the framework of classroom discourse analysis, the present study predominantly intends to explore the variations of teacher talk of the two groups of teachers, i.e., the novice and the expert teachers in high schools, in terms of discourse quantity, questioning types, discourse structures and feedback manners.The subjects involved in this study were four teachers (two expert teachers and two novice teachers) of English from a key high school in Beijing. The selection of the novice and expert teachers was based on the three-phase of teacher expertise for EFL teachers proposed by Lian Rong (2004). The data were collected based on the researcher's classroom observations and the transcripts from the video-recorded lessons. The data were analyzed by using SPSS from the perspectives of interactive features. The major findings are summarized as follows:1.The expert teacher's talk time (TTT) is more than the novice teacher's talk time. But the TTLT (teacher target language talk) of the expert teacher is less than that of the novice teacher. That is to say the novice teachers use less native language and students are exposed mostly in the target language input in the classes of novice teachers.2. The novice teacher raises more display questions than expert teacher, in terms of referential questions.3.IRF structure is still the predominant model used in the classroom of the two groups of teachers. Expert teacher uses more IRF structures than novice teacher.4.Both expert and novice teacher tend to use more discourse feedback. The expert teachers rent more discourse feedback than the novice teachers.The findings of the present study have implications on both teacher training and language teaching. Firstly, teachers should manipulate their talk and decrease the use of native language. Secondly, teachers should raise more referential questions so as to create a language learning environment more closing to the nature settings. Thirdly, it is recommended that teachers apply more different kinds of classroom discourse structures. The more discourse structures the teachers use the more dynamic interactions happen in classroom teaching. Lastly, teachers should pay attention to the properity of their feedbacks and the reliability of their evaluation. Only by the appropriate evaluation of student's accomplishment, students can be greatly encouraged to make real communication.