A Study Of Gender Differences On Teacher Talk In Chinese High School English Classrooms

Teacher talk in EFL classes is a special register with its own specific forms and interactive properties for it functions not only as a tool in teaching but also as an important source of students'language input. The quantity and quality of teacher talk plays a decisive role both in the teaching task fulfillment and in students'second language acquisition (Hakansson, 1986). Accordingly, teacher talk in EFL classes has attracted the scholars'and teachers'attention.It has been proved that men and women are different in language use and have different communication styles. There exists an unbalanced structure in the gender composition of teachers. In EFL classes especially, we find much more female teachers than male teachers. Therefore the different teaching styles between male and female teachers deserve more attention.However, gender- related differences in teacher talk haven't got enough attention. This research is in the purpose of exploring the different situations in male and female teacher talk in senior high school English classrooms and accordingly put forward some suggestions to improve quality of the high school English teaching under the New English Curriculum.Based on the Input Hypothesis, Interaction Hypothesis, Output Hypothesis and the previous studies implemented by scholars in China and abroad, this research is implemented from four aspects: the amount of teacher talk, teachers'questioning, interactional modification and teachers'feedback.This thesis is an empirical study. Ten English classes given by five different male teachers and five different female teachers were recorded, transcribed and then analyzed. The study shows there exist differences in male teacher talk and female teacher talk in senior high school English classrooms: male teachers spend more time talking in class, their questions and positive feedbacks are much fewer than those of female teachers; female teachers put forward less referential questions than male teachers. Based on the empirical study, some implications for further improvement of teacher talk are given by the author respectively and in general, which will increase students'interest and confidence in English learning, facilitate the teaching process and students'second language acquisition and improve the quality of English teaching.