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

China's English class has long been dominated by the traditional grammar-translationmethod and the teacher does most of talking to students. Though students may have a goodcommand of grammar, they are unable to express themselves freely when face realcommunication. The new English Education Syllable for junior middle school in Chinarequires that the teachers should foster the students'primary communicative ability in bothspoken and written mode, to cultivate the ability to study independently and lay a solidfoundation for further study and use of English. So it is of great significance to observe whathappens in the classrooms and whether the teaching principles are implemented in theclassrooms.In this thesis, the author investigates three English classrooms in a junior middle schoolfrom the following aspects: IRF pattern, turn-taking behaviors in classrooms, the amount ofteacher talk and student talk, the frequency and types of teachers'questions as well as thefeedback given by teachers. Through a close study of collected data, the findings aresummarized as follows: (1) The IRF pattern is dominant in classrooms, but other morecomplex patterns are found too. (2)With regard to the turn-taking behaviors in classrooms, theresults show that teacher is the authority of turn allocation who decides who is going to takethe turn, when to take the turn and what to talk about. (3)The amount of student talk is lessthan that of teacher talk. (4)The teachers tend to ask more display questions than referentialquestions. (5) Most of the praises offered by teachers are short and simple praises andrepetition of response followed by praise amounts for the second percentage. But praisesfollowed by appraisals are not found in the present study. The analysis of error treatmentshows that providing a clue and expecting self-repair is used by teachers in an unexpectedhigh frequency while asking others to answer comes next. The least frequently used one can befound in the method of explicit correction. Ignoring and correcting later is not found in thepresent study.All of these findings reveal that there lack of genuine communication between teachersand students in English classrooms. From the study, we can get the following implications: (1)Teachers should give students more opportunities to speak in class. (2) There should be moreinteraction in classrooms to stimulate students'interest. (3) Supportive and encouragingenvironment should be constructed in classrooms.