A Study Of Teacher Talk In Reading Classes In Senior High Schools

With the smooth implementation of the new round of curriculum reform, great changes have taken place in many teachers'teaching notions. Quite a number of them are willing to transmit the role of teachers and arrange their classroom activities around the students, creating a student-centered class. But the effectiveness of teaching is not very satisfactory and many students have problems with language output.However, teacher talk in EFL classroom plays a vital role in promoting the effectiveness of teaching results. As Nunan (1991) pointed out:"Teacher talk is of crucial importance, not only for the organization of the classroom but also for the processes of acquisition. It is important for the organization and management of the classroom because it is through language that teachers either succeed or fail to implement their teaching plans. In terms of acquisition, teacher talk is important because it is probably the major source of comprehensible target language input the learner is likely to receive."The amount and type of teacher talk is even regarded as a decisive factor of success or failure in classroom teaching (Hakansson, 1986). A lot of constructive researches have been conducted for the past 20 years, whereas there are not many researches in EFL classrooms, not to mention the research of teacher talk in special class types.In view of the importance of teacher talk, this research studied the features of teacher talk of two excellent teachers who got the first prize in the 2007 6th National Senior Middle School Model & Presentation Lesson Competition and investigated the opinion of 120 students from Jilin No 1 Middle School We tried to get a clear understanding of the function of teacher talk in constructing the reading class in senior high schools. The findings are summarized as follows:1 The study indicates that there is a preference of student talk over teacher talk.2 Teacher talk in these two classes is clear, comprehensible, communicative, which is good for the learners'language input and output as well.3 As to the frequency of the use of display questions and referential questions, referential questions are reported as being used more frequently than display questions.4 Positive feedbacks are often used by excellent teachers, while as to error corrections, self-correction is desired by most students according to the result of the questionnaire.Since they are the representatives of excellent teachers nationwide,the features of their teacher talk in reading classes can be used as criteria for all the teachers.The findings of the study provide us with some insights on reading class in senior high schools in China:1 Teachers are expected to create a student-centered reading class to develop the students'reading ability all around.2 Teachers are encouraged to control teacher talk and improve the quality of teacher talk to provide more comprehensible input and more opportunities to output language.3 The techniques of asking questions are to be improved.4 Positive and effective feedback should be provided and besides, appropriate treatment of errors should be offered, creating a relaxed and unthreatening environment and therefore enhancing learners'motivation in foreign language learning.Limitations and suggestions for the future research are also discussed in the study. For example, limited subjects are involved in the study and multiple techniques for data collection should be used to get more accurate results. But it is hoped that the findings are of help with the future study in some other types of lessons.