A Comparative Study Of Teacher Interactive Behaviors In English Classroom Between Rural And Urban Junior Middle School

Teacher-student interaction refers to the process of the interactive exchanges andinfluences on psychology and behavior between teacher and individual students orstudent groups that happen in classroom teaching. Regarded as a second languagesubject in the compulsory education stage, the junior English teachers should beduty-bound to carry out interactive teaching in classroom; this is not only helps todevelop students' comprehensive application in English and learn English better, butalso promotes to teachers' professional growth.This study takes Kommunikative Didaktik, Humanistic Psychology, ConstructivistPsychology, Input Hypothesis, Output Hypothesis and Interaction Hypothesis as thetheory foundation. By analyzing rural and urban junior English teachers' interactionalbehavioral characteristics, interaction time allocation in classroom and the interactionalbehavioral characteristics of the students in their classes, the study try to find out thecurrent state of teachers interactive behaviors during teacher-student interaction inEnglish classroom on these two areas, discuss the potential differences and analyze themain reasons that cause the differences. Because such, with the application of themethods of questionnaire surveys, classroom observation, interviews and contrastanalytic methods, this study takes3weeks to make a field study in6junior high schoolsof Suizhou in Hubei Province.This article divides into6parts. The first part mainly introduces paper origin,significance and research methods, etc. The second part is the overview of relevanttheories of teacher-student interaction and the effects of teacher-student interaction inclassroom on English teaching. The third part makes a questionnaire and brieflyanalyses teachers' interactive behavioral characteristics in rural and urban middle schoolof Suizhou as well as the existing differences. The forth part applies the method ofclassroom observation to analyze the differences between rural junior English teachersand urban teachers in language behaviors, nonverbal behaviors and interacting time allocation in classroom teaching as well as the differences of language behaviors andnonverbal behaviors between students in these two areas. The fifth part analyzes theinvestigation results mentioned in previous parts and interviews6teachers, then try toexplain the main reasons of the differences of teacher interactive behaviors duringteacher-student interaction between rural and urban junior middle schools of Suizhou.The sixth part is the conclusion of this study.The main results as follows:I. In teacher-student interaction time allocation, rural and urban English classroomboth spend much time on the pattern of teacher interacting with student individuals andthe pattern of teacher interacting with whole class. The urban English classrooms devotemore time on the latter pattern and carry out in more interactive way; the ruralclassrooms expand more time on the former pattern with a single way.II.In the8types of teacher interaction behaviors in class teaching, there are nodifferences in leadership behavior, understanding behavior, admonishing behaviorbetween rural and urban English teachers. However, there are marked differences inhelping/friendly behavior, student responsibility/freedom behavior, uncertain behavior,dissatisfied behavior and strict behavior. In addition, urban teachers have higher scoresthan the rural teachers in the first three behaviors while they get lower scores in the lasttwo behaviors. Furthermore, according to the behavioral characteristics of teacherinteraction in class teaching, this study divides the rural and urban junior Englishteachers into2categories:"Cooperation-Dominance" and "Opposition-Submission".As a result, urban English teachers who fall into "Cooperation-Dominance" are morethan the rural while the rural belongs to "Opposition-Submission" are obviously morethan the urban.III.In teachers' interactive language behaviors and interactive nonverbal behaviors,there are no differences in nonverbal behaviors between rural and urban Englishteachers while significant differences in language behaviors. Besides, this study dividesthese two kinds of behaviors into positive emotional behaviors and passive emotionalbehaviors. In positive emotional behaviors, there are no differences on languagebehaviors between rural and urban teachers. However, there are remarkable differenceson nonverbal behaviors and urban English teachers have a higher frequency than therural. In passive emotional behaviors, there are differences on either behavior betweenrural and urban teachers, and rural teacher have a higher frequency than the urban. IV.In students' interactive language behaviors and interactive nonverbal behaviors,there are no differences on language behaviors between rural and urban students;however, there are marked differences on nonverbal languages which lies primarily inraising hands, laughing and coming up to the platform, and urban students have a higherfrequency than the rural.V. The main reasons of the differences between urban and rural teacher interactivebehaviors in English classroom of Suizhou includes: the differences of teaching force,job stress, training and dealing with textbook between urban and rural teachers, thedifferences of class sizes between urban and rural English classroom and the differencesof English level between urban and rural students.