Influence Of Teacher Talk On Students’ EFL Learning Enthusiasm

In EFL classroom, teacher talk(TT) plays a greatly important role in English teachingand learning. It is not only the medium of foreign language teaching and learning inclassroom, which provides the main resource of target language input, but also anindispensable tool for teachers to carry out teaching tasks and to organize teaching activities.In1970s, some western scholars began the study on teacher talk. It was not until the late1990s that the studies on TT have begun to develop in China.This study gives a descriptive analysis on TT from the four following aspects, namely,1)the quantity of TT,2) the adoption of L1of TT,3) teachers’ question behavior,4) teachers’feedback, on the basis of the Input Hypothesis put forward by Krashen, the InteractionHypothesis offered by Long and the Output Hypothesis proposed by Swain, aiming to get ageneral feature of TT and at the same time, explore some problems existing in TT, hence get ageneral understanding of the influence of TT on the students’ learning enthusiasm. This studytakes six teachers and298students in local key senior high schools(Ganzhou NO.1MiddleSchool and Ganzhou NO.3Middle School) as participants. TT in this investigation are studiedby means of observation, audio-recording and questionnaires.This thesis is composed of five chapters: Chapter one gives an introduction to this study,including the background of this study, the purpose of this study, and the significance of thisstudy. Chapter two provides the background information including the theoretical background.It also presents the brief introduction of TT, including the definition and features of TT andthe present study on TT both at home and abroad. Chapter three mainly focuses on the designof the research with some detailed issues included, such as the participants, the researchmethodology, and the instruments of data collection. Chapter four analyzes teacher talk inEFL classroom according to the data collected in this study. Chapter five provides aconclusion of the whole thesis. It sums up the major findings in this research and attempts togive some suggestions on senior high school EFL teaching and learning. Moreover, thelimitations of this study is also pointed out in this part.