A Study Of Teacher Talk In EFL Classes At High Schools

The EFL classroom teaching has always been an important topic among the educators andthe linguistics both in China and abroad. Teachers, as the important organizers and controllers inclass, play a great role. The main media for teachers to organize and control the classroom isTeacher Talk, which is very influential on the classroom. In recent years, studies on Teacher Talkare becoming more and more, but most of which focus on the analysis of Teacher Talk in collegeEnglish teaching while there are few analyses and researches on Teacher Talk in English teachingat high school. Therefore，this paper studies twenty-six teaching videos of twenty-six Englishteachers at high schools. It aims to find out the outstanding features of Teacher Talk in highschool and help teachers better understand the major functions of Teacher Talk so as to improvethe practice in this aspect.This study makes an analysis of Teacher Talk in EFL classroom at high schools through amulti-angle such as the quantity of Teacher Talk, the adjustments of Teacher Talk, ways ofquestioning and ways of feedbacks in order to discuss the relationship between Teacher Talk andclassroom interaction and try to conclude the outstanding features of an effective Teacher Talk.The research questions are as follows.(1)What functions does Teacher Talk play in EFL classes?(2)What are the outstanding features of an effective Teacher Talk?(3)Is there any commonpattern or structure in Teacher Talk?The result of this study shows that the proportion of Teacher Talk in high schools’ Englishteaching is still larger than that of Student Talk and other activities, however, the gap has beengreatly reduced compared to the previous research results. In classes, teachers usually makeproper adjustments, for example, they often slow down their talking speed. There is morewaiting time during their talk. More stresses appear which make their speeches clearer and moreexaggerated when they try to explain something. They usually use basic and simple vocabularyand sentence patterns. They often prefer declarative sentences and imperative sentences tointerrogative sentences. However, compared to the previous researches, the proportion ofinterrogative sentences has greatly increased. Ways of questioning are studied from two differentaspects, one of which is from the perspective of the content of questions. The research resultindicates that in grammar and reading classes, the proportion of display questions is larger thanthat of referential questions, while in listening and speaking classes, the proportion of referentialquestions is larger than that of display questions. The other aspect is from the ways of answering.Most of teachers prefer to encourage students to stand up as volunteers, and sometimes they alsocall their names according to the actual situation. The research also shows that in classes teachers prefer to employ positive feedbacks in various ways, such as the use of encouraging expressionsand gestures or the repetition of the students’ responses.This study indicates that in the practice of the new curriculum standard, teachers’ role alters.Teachers in class are not just organizers, controllers or lectures, but also participants in classroomactivities. In classes, teachers ought to design more activities for students to participate in, suchas group discussions, propositional speeches and role plays. In this way, students can realize theirmainstay status and are able to "think more, speak more and practice more" rather than just"listen". Teacher Talk plays an essential role in teaching as a component of teachers’ professionalquality. Therefore, teachers are supposed to pay more attention to it and improve theircompetence.