A Pragmatic Study On Directives In Teacher Talks

With the new turn of curriculum reform,"task—based"teaching is advocated in EFL class. Here the"task"which is given by teachers, to some extent, can be considered as directives given by teachers.From the studies on teacher talks, we can conclude that they are not only the source of language input but also the tool for teachers doing things in EFL class. Most of these studies have mainly focused on instructional functions(Cazden,2001), language features (Larsen—Freeman,Long,1991), and classifications (Sinclair,Brazil, 1982).Teacher talks in these studies are all regarded as a whole, they can be divided into many parts from pragmatic view(Chen aiqi,Zeng danjun,2008).Directives which are given by the teachers in EFL class are one of the significant components in teacher talks, which are regarded as one channel for teachers to do things like imparting, organizing and managing the class. Besides this, directives are also related to students'understandings of teaching contents and their accomplishments of tasks.For a long time the scholars and educators both in China and in western countries have mainly studied types of directives, functions of directives and effects of directives. The scholars in western countries have mainly studied directives in EFL class based on Comprehensible Input theory (Krashen,1980), Mediation theory (Williams,Burden,2005); the educational experts in China have mainly focused on directives in teacher talks in elementary school and junior middle school, whereas the studies on directives in senior high school is scarce, compared with other components in teacher talks.In this article,the study on directives in teacher talks would be primarily based on Speech act theory proposed by Austin and Searle and Face theory proposed by Brown and Levinson.20 English lessons recorded in senior high school in this article. About research method, this article presents an empirical study on directives in teacher talks; the main instruments are classroom observation, transcription and interview. The structure of this article will be presented in the following ways: the first part is introduction of the study. We will talk about the background of the study in this part: teacher talks have been studied as a whole by educational scholars. A large number of results have been gained. However, the study of directives in teacher talks are seldom, compared with other components in teacher talks. The second part is the literature review of the preceding study on directives and some related theories such as the speech acts theory and the face theory which would be adopted in this article. The third part is the research method. 20 English lessons recorded in senior high school in this article. About research method, this article presents an empirical study on directives in teacher talks; the main instruments are classroom observation, transcription and interview. The fourth part is analysis on directives in teacher talks based on the speech act theory and face theory. Types of directives in teacher talks in senior high school would be discussed; directives would be analyzed in a pragmatic way. The last part is the conclusion about this article.