A Comparative Analysis Of Teacher Talk Between Expert And Novice Teachers In Junior Middle School English Classroom

Nowadays, teacher talk is increasingly becoming an important aspect in studyingthe foreign language teaching by many linguists at home and abroad. In China, Englishteaching is mainly carried in classroom which is a major place for most of the middleschool students to be exposed to and use English. Therefore, teacher talk plays a crucialrole in English classroom teaching. It is not only a medium of teaching which representsthe teaching method and implements the teaching plan, but also works as a targetlanguage which is an important source of language acquisition for students. Doingresearch on teacher talk can help us have a better understanding of the real classroomsituation, and then improve the English classroom teaching effect.Most of the previous researches on teacher talk at home have been focused on thehigher education stage, especially the analysis of the characteristics of teacher talk insenior high school and college, while the studies on the teacher talk at primary andmiddle school are relatively weak. Based on the Comprehensible Input Theory, OutputHypothesis and Interaction Hypothesis, this thesis will take the middle school Englishclassroom as an example, trying to compare the discourse quantity, questioning types,interactional modification and feedback manners between expert and novice teachersfrom the perspective of teacher professional development. Through comparing theirdifferences, the features of teacher talk and current situations of middle school Englishclassroom will be discussed. Besides that, this thesis also aims to strengthen Englishteachers’, especially the novice teachers’, attention to the teacher talk and provide somebeneficial suggestions and enlightenments for promoting teachers’ professionaldevelopment, improving the quality of middle school English teaching, and constructingan efficient English classroom.This research selected two expert teachers and two novice teachers from a juniormiddle school as the research subjects. Through the questionnaires, tape-recording,classroom observation and interviews, this thesis collected and analyzed the research data,and then the main findings were concluded as follows: In the junior middle school classroom teaching, significant differences have been found in terms of teacher talkbetween expert and novice teachers. Compared with novice teachers, expert teachers’ talktime is less and they tend to provide more opportunities for students’ language output.The interaction between teacher and students is frequently taken so that the classroomatmosphere is more active. Moreover, the expert teachers are inclined to apply variousinteraction patterns in their classes. They tend to use more clarification requests andreferential questions to proceed negotiations of meaning with students. As for thestudents’ answers, expert teachers can adopt more specific positive feedback by takingadvantage of teacher talk in order to arouse students’ learning motivation, improve theirlearning behavior and make sure the communication between teacher and students goesfluently. However, the novice teachers lack the flexibility in using their teacher talk; theyfail to adjust their teacher talk to students’ practical situations, leaving little chance forstudents to participate in the classroom language learning, which affects students’language acquisition.