An Investigation Of Teacher Talk In TEFL Context In Rural Areas

Researches have been done on teacher talk (TT) since 1970s. TT, one of the crucial parts of teacher behaviors, is a classroom language teachers use to organize and manage the L2/FL class and implement their teaching plans. TT can be used to pass on knowledge and give directions and feedback on student performance. It is very important because it is learners' major source of comprehensible input of target language. The amount and the quality of TT is a decisive factor that affects success or failure of classroom teaching. Most of the researches have been done in western countries where learners' target language is their native language or second language. Recently, some Chinese researchers have paid much attention to the study of TT in universities, but very little attention is paid to TT in the context of rural areas.The purpose of this study is to find out the situations of TT in rural class. The author adopts naturalistic inquiry to investigate TT by recording and questionnaires, and focus on TTT and STT, the use of NL and TL, and teachers' instruction, questions and feedback. Based on the analysis of the data from the transcription of the recording and from the questionnaires, the author tries to answer some questions posed in the previous section, to find out some problems in class such as the prevalence of the teacher-centered methodology, too much native language, and improper use of questions and feedback, and so forth, and offers some solutions to the problems above. The author believes that research on TT is of great significance and hopes that this study can attract more teachers and scholars' attention to TT in rural areas and improve TT in class in classroom teaching.