Conversation Analysis Of English Extensive Reading Class:from The Perspective Of Interaction

The present thesis conducts a tentative research in English extensive reading classroom taking the interaction between the teacher and students into consideration and focusing on the natural process of what happens in English extensive reading class nowadays through the conversation analysis approach. In this way, the characteristics of the teachers’and students’interaction in the English extensive reading class recently can be portrayed authentically. The participants are288freshmen majoring in English from6classes and3teachers in a university of Hainan. From September2011to November2011, twenty-four periods of English extensive reading classes are observed and recorded through the whole process by the researcher, with the method of classroom observation. As a result of the limitation of the recording materials and tools, only the verbal interaction between the teachers and the students can be recorded and transcribed, excluding the nonverbal interactions between the teachers and the students. In addition, due to the limits of recording technology and other considerations, the interaction between the students and their peers are neglected. In a word, the interaction explored in the present thesis chiefly focuses on the verbal interaction between the teachers and the students. The recorded materials are transcribed by the software Folker Transcription File, analyzed from these four main aspects turn-taking, teachers’questions, meaning negotiation, and teachers’feedback, which can directly reflect their interaction, and then discussed based on the theoretical foundation of Krashen’s comprehensive input hypothesis, Long’s interaction hypothesis, Swain’s output hypothesis and social constructivism.After the analysis and discussion of the data, the research results reveal that a few classes show the active and harmonious interaction between students and teachers. Nevertheless, the varieties of interactional strategies are relatively insufficient in most of the classes and there are some problems such as the teachers’ long monologues, too many display questions and so on, due to the asymmetrical relationship between teachers and students and the traditional teacher-centered teaching model in the English extensive reading classroom. Therefore, some strategies of improving and facilitating the English extensive reading classroom interaction are suggested at the end of the present thesis.Last but not least, the analysis of the present thesis does not only enrich the theory of conversation analysis and relevant studies in the field of classroom interaction, but also has its pedagogical and practical implications for the interaction strategies of English extensive reading class in Chinese universities, thus improving both the teachers’ teaching and students’learning.