Research On The Influences Of Teacher Feedbacks On Interactions In Middle School English Classrooms

Nowadays, communicative language teaching is very popular in English teaching. Therefore, more and more attention is paid to classroom interactions, for effective classroom interactions can promote communications in classrooms. Teacher feedbacks, which are a part of teacher talks, exert great influence on classroom interactions. Appropriate teacher feedbacks can promote classroom interactions. On the contrary, inappropriate ones will impede classroom interactions. This study focuses on the influence of teacher feedbacks on interactions in middle school English classrooms.The data of this study is from"Middle School English Classrom Corpora"by Northeast Research Center for FLT (foreign language teaching) in Schools, out of which altogether nine English teachers'classes are chosen. The author aims to find out the types of teacher feedbacks that are often used by teachers, and the influence of teacher feedbacks on classroom interactions.The results of the data analysis show that: 1) there are mainly nine types of teacher feedbacks in English classrooms; 2) teacher feedbacks are characterized by variety, and collocated to different teaching materials,but they lack in flexibility; 3) different teacher feedbacks have their own effects on classroom interactions; 4) teacher feedbacks can influence classroom interactions through classroom interaction patterns. It is found that elicitation and clarification can lead to connected IRF patterns, while repetition and simple approval produce disconnected IRF patterns. Some types of teacher feedbacks (such as metalinguistic feedbacks, comments. etc.) occur in both of the above classroom interaction patterns,but they are not decisive in classroom interaction patterns.This paper intends to help English teachers in middle schools to realize the importance of the influence of teacher feedbacks on classroom interactions, to arouse teachers'awareness of theories and practice of teacher feedbacks, to improve classroom interactions through appropriate feedbacks, and to create favorable English classrooms for students.