Teacher-student Interaction In Junior High EFL Classrooms: A Contrastive Case Study Of Triadic Dialogue

As English teaching in China has been long shriveled by the public examination system and English classroom is often portrayed as teacher-centered with passive students, the Ministry of Education (MOE) has restructured English curriculum and pedagogy, laying emphasis on developing students'"communicative competence". However, in virtue of the dualistic structure, severe disparity in education between urban and rural areas has existed for long. Be that as it may, English classrooms in primary and secondary schools have been customarily overlooked by domestic scholars and researchers, let alone those in remote regions.To address this gap, I investigate teacher-student interaction in junior high level by analyzing the initiation/response/follow-up (IRF) exchanges in classrooms by six teachers (4 from rural schools and 2 urban). Under a Vygotskyan socio-cultural perspective, through both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the transcribed data (in all, six units were transcribed, with one unit per teacher), I demonstrate the various forms and functions of triadic dialogue in teacher-whole-class interaction in both urban and rural schools and how the choice of initiating question and follow-up move affects the nature of the students'participation. The results reveal that, by posing referential questions for students'opinions and conjectures, providing positive acknowledgements and building on students'responses, the teachers in urban school promote students'involvement in the interaction and consequently, increase students'learning opportunities. Contrarily, teachers in rural schools, through asking Display Questions, refusing to acknowledge students'contributions, disengaging involvement and language use on the part of the students, limit students'participation, and consequently, reduce their learning opportunities. The findings underscore the importance of teachers asking more authentic questions and taking students'contribution seriously in classroom interaction. More importantly, they remind us of the urgency of taking measures to diminish the Regional Disparity in Education.