A Study Of Teacher Talk In Englishi Reading Classroom In High Schools

English teacher talk (TT) is one of the most important sources of language input for middle school students. How teachers carry out their talk in the classroom influences students'language acquisition. This study aims to explore the present state of teacher talk of excellent teachers and new teachers in middle schools and analyze their differences and effects on students'language learning from the following six aspects: the amount of teacher talk, the quality of teacher talk, questioning, interaction modification, teachers'feedback and the effect of teacher talk. Through recording and transcription, classroom observation, interviews and questionnaires, the main findings are concluded as follows:(1) The teacher talk time of these three excellent teachers are mainly between 15-20 minutes in the 45-minute period while the teacher talk time of new teachers is between 20-25minutes. It shows that excellent teachers can provide more opportunities for students to output language.(2) Language plan and comprehensiveness of the excellent teachers'talk is more effective than the new teachers'one.(3) Excellent teachers emphasize more referential questions rather than display questions and their questioning can cover almost the whole class. However, new teachers use more display questions and their distribution of questioning is mainly directed to the students in the front rows.(4) Excellent teachers adopt more clarification requests to maintain communication successfully while new teachers use more comprehension checks to control their teaching as planned.(5) Excellent teachers use more positive feedback to evaluate students'language performance while new teachers often use simple and unchanged feedback in class.(6) Compared with new teachers, excellent teachers can help students'language acquisition with their talk and improve students'reading results.From the above findings, it is shown that the teacher talk of excellent teachers can effectively enhance students'motivation, improve their learning behavior and facilitate language acquisition. However, new teachers still lack the knowledge and awareness of the effective teacher talk, and they cannot adjust their teaching talk consciously and effectively according to students'reaction and need so that students have few opportunities to actively participant in activities in the classroom. As a result, the teacher talk of new teachers cannot help students'language acquisition. With regard to this, some suggestions are provided in this study. As an English language teacher, he/she should: (1) control teacher talk time consciously and create more opportunities for student to use language, (2) reflect his/her teaching frequently and learn how to organize and plan teacher talk, (3) question properly and increase the number of referential questions, (4) engage students in meaning-centered interaction and use more clarification requests and confirmation checks to undertake negotiation of meaning, (5) provide more effective and positive feedback for students'performance to enhance students'motivation in language learning (6) create a harmonious classroom environment to lower affective anxiety and increase students'language output.