A Qualitative Study Of Teaching Behavior Between Expert And Novice Teachers In Senior High School EFL Classroom

With the implementation of the New Curriculum Reform, there has been a shift fromteacher-centeredness to learner-centeredness. Therefore, teachers have to change theirtraditional teaching conception and behavior as well to keep up with the social development.In recent years, an increasing number of language researchers have been paying specialattention to the research of teacher expertise, especially different teaching behaviors betweenexpert and novice teachers. However, the previous studies lack the pertinence to concretecourses. Teacher training, in most cases, is nothing but merely a formality.This thesis mainly aimed to identify the differences between the expert and noviceteacher in presenting teaching behaviors in EFL classroom. Then the influence that differentteaching behaviors had on students’ learning were also observed and discussed. What’s more,the stages that novice teachers may pass through as they progress into expert teachers werealso summed up from the result of the study.Two English teachers were chosen as the expert teacher and novice teacher from a keysenior high school in Yun Cheng city, Shan Xi province, where the author used to work beforebeing admitted to Shan Xi normal university as a postgraduate student. Qualitative data wascollected by classroom observation and interview of the two teachers. Research instrumentswere mainly the classroom observation worksheet adapted by the author himself from theobservation worksheet of Minnesota University and another by professor Tang Weihai (shownin the appendix I and II). The analysis was made and presented according to the classificationof English teachers’ teaching behavior, which was also an adaption of Professor Shi Liangfangand Cui Yunhuo’s classification.The findings from the qualitative analysis provided fruitful information and had clearimplications for EFL teaching as well as teacher training. They are summed up as follows:1. There were great diversities between the expert and novice teacher both in presentation behavior and interaction behavior in EFL classroom.2. The teaching behavior the two teachers adopted reflected two completely differentstatus of teacher and students in class, namely, teacher-centered and student-centered.3. The different teaching behaviors had great influence on students’ learning.4. The author also introduced 3 stages that a novice teacher may pass through whendeveloping into an expert teacher on the basis of the present study.