A Case Study Of English Classroom Teacher-Student Interaction In A Middle School

For a long time, the achievements we have gained at imparting English knowledge in English teaching in high schools are obvious to all, but the shortcomings of the traditional English teaching mode under the control of the College Entrance Examination also increasingly come out, especially problems of teacher-student relationship. Under traditional teaching environment, the teacher acts as a lecturer and students as note-takers. During her teaching practices in some different middle schools, the author found that T-S interaction of English classroom in middle schools was not satisfactory. So the author made a research on T-S interaction in Tianjin No.1 Middle School during her two-month teaching practice there. The author chose five teachers and ten classes from Senior Grade Two as her research samples. Data collection was mainly from classroom observation, questionnaires and interviews with teachers and students. After nearly a two-month research, the author found the problems of T-S interaction of English classroom in No.1 Middle School and gave some suggestions.The present study, taking Input Hypothesis and Interaction Hypothesis as its theoretical bases, makes the research on teachers and students from Senior Grade Two in No.1 Middle School in terms of interaction form and interaction content which consist of the teacher's behaviors such as, teacher questions and teacher feedback. Problems are discovered from classroom observational chart and reasons can be reflected from results of questionnaires and interviews with teachers and students. In terms of interaction form, the pattern 'the teacher & the group' has never shown and student-initiated interaction is under the control of the teacher. In terms of interaction content, the whole class is full of questions and answers mainly in order to check students'memory of language points. Therefore, the atmosphere of English classroom in Senior Grade Two in No.1 Middle School is not lively enough. What's worse; teachers seldom gave'real'feedback to students'answers and students took non-importance of their teacher's feedback. It can be noted from the results of questionnaires and interviews that language points are taken as the most important factor in interaction classroom. However, the function of teacher and students is neglected.Confronting with the problems, the author takes problems of teacher-student relationship as the main cause of the problems. Teachers should design a class from the perspective of students'interests. An interactive class should be of variety and flexibility in form and, in interaction content, teachers should emphasize students' function, trying to guide students'learning rather than check students'level of acquisition only. Thus, the class atmosphere will be lively enough and teacher-student relationship will be more harmonious which makes T-S interaction perform well. Therefore, both teachers'and students'roles should be changed in new curriculum so as to improve students'ability of English learning. Under different circumstances, a teacher can be a controller, an organizer and plays some other roles, and students can be participants and risk-takers and independent learners.