The Influence Of Teacher’s Feedback On Students’ Affect In Junior High School English Classrooms

Teacher’s feedback, as a vital part of teacher talk, plays an important role in Englishteaching and learning. The teacher provides feedback to students, so that they cannot onlyfind out their English-learning performance but also acquire more accurate knowledge.However, in order to get teacher’s feedback effective and teaching smooth, the teacher has totake into account students’individual differences, especially their affect. Positive andeffective feedback helps to maintain students’self-esteem and strong motivation. Otherwise,it will increase students’anxiety, change their attitude towards English-learning, lessen theirmotivation and even lose their interest and confidence in English-learning. Given that thefocus of thousands of previous researchers at home and abroad is on the feedback in keyuniversities and senior high schools, but the study on common junior high schools, those inrural areas in particular, is very limited. Besides, the students in junior high schools are at thecritical period of English-learning, during which teacher’s feedback seems more importantfor students to acquire knowledge and shape sound personality or affect. Thus, the authorattempts to explore the types of feedback the teachers frequently provide in junior highschool English classrooms and the main features of teacher’s feedback. In addition, thelearners’attitudes towards teacher’s feedback and the influence of teacher’s feedback onstudents’affect are included as well.In order to answer those questions, the researcher adopted the following methods:classroom observation, audio-recording and transcription, questionnaire and interview, andnaturally quite a real situation of junior high school English classrooms is portrayed.To be specific, the subjects in this study are composed of two English teachers in acommon junior high school which is located in the countryside of Tai’an City and their 99students who are in two parallel classes in Grade Three. Through the classroom observationand audio-recording, teacher’s feedback and the whole teaching process are recorded. Andthe interview with the teachers is a supplement to the research. In the meanwhile, 99 studentsare invited to answer the questionnaire, and in the end 97 copies are proved valid. On thebasis of the transcribed materials and the statistics of questionnaire, the author makes ananalysis from the aspects of the types of teacher’s feedback and student’s attitude towardsteacher’s feedback, and finally reaches some conclusions: 1) According to the details,teacher’s feedback can be classified into simple praise, praise plus comment, repetition pluspraise, asking another student to answer instead, self-repair, repetition, explicit correction and simple affirmation. Apart from praise plus comment, others are used by two teachers todifferent extent. The feedback is diversified but the words are simple and seldom effectivewhich are barely related to where students do well or badly. Besides, explicit correction isalso frequently enforced on students regardless of their affect. 2) From the perspective ofpositive and negative feedback, their frequency is almost the same rather than the formerholds overwhelming superiority over the latter as expected. Moreover, if the illocutionaryforce of the negative feedback is much stronger, the students have more chance of depressionand anxiety. 3) Different feedback has different effects on students. If they get the teacher’sfeedback, they believe their teacher attaches importance to themselves and hence theirmotivation and confidence will be enhanced. Meanwhile, what the students are eager toreceive is more positive feedback, as their self-esteem and good image can be protected.What’s more, the students hope for the clearer feedback, which is more beneficial to theirlearning.