A Comparative Study Of Expert And Novice English Teachers' Feedback In Senior Middle Schools

Teacher talk is not only the tool for carrying out teachers' teaching plan,but also an important source of input for students.Teachers' feedback is an important element of teacher talk in classroom interaction.In classroom interaction,teachers' feedback can help students to understand the teaching material better and teachers can also correct students' mistakes through feedback.Effective feedback can stimulate students' study interest, while improper feedback may discourage students.Therefore,the study of teachers' feedback is of great importance to language teaching.Since the late 1980s,there are plenty of studies about classroom as language environment in the research field of second language acquisition(SLA).Most of the studies are about classroom language,especially the descriptive studies of teacher talk,the studies of the verbal interaction between the teacher and the students,and experimental studies of the relationship between classroom language and language acquisition. Teachers' feedback is an important aspect in the field of second language classroom research.But in domestic research,there are still not enough researches about teachers' feedback,and the comparative studies of expert and novice teachers' feedback are much fewer. This study is based on the related studies from home and abroad,using Input Hypothesis,Interaction Hypothesis and Output Hypothesis in second language acquisition as the theoretical foundations and Narciss Huth's formative feedback framework as the analysis framework.Six teachers and their students in Renhuai No.1 High School are chosen to be the subjects.Using the methods of questionnaire,classroom observation and interview,the research tries to answer the following questions:(1) What are the teachers' general perceptions of feedback?(2) Are there any differences between expert and novice English teachers' feedback? What are they?(3) What are the students' preferences towards teachers' feedback?Based on the data analysis,it is found that teachers pay attention to the feedback more or less in class in many cases.Although teachers use some teachers' feedback techniques to encourage students,teachers are lacking of the systematic theory about teachers' feedback.Furthermore,there are some differences between expert and novice English teachers' feedback.For instance,expert teachers provide more elaborated feedback and give students more opportunities for language output than novice teachers. But the feedback efficiency of all the teachers needs to be improved.Students in the English classroom,whatever the top ones or the underachieving ones,all prefer to the positive teachers' feedback.They expect the relaxed and active learning environment. They think positive teachers' feedback can make them confident in their performance in English class.In response to these problems,some feasible suggestions are worked out:teachers should learn theories related to teachers' feedback;teachers should enrich feedback types; teachers should adapt feedback according to students' language level and characteristics; teachers should give students more opportunities to produce their output;teachers should think adjustment after class.In short,only when the present situation and current problems of teachers' feedback in Senior English class are well understood and the thorough researches in English classroom teaching are conducted,can English teachers improve their feedback techniques, lead students to participate in class interaction actively and improve the effectiveness of their feedback.