A Study On The Features Of Teacher Talk In EFL Class From The Perspective Of Interaction

Teacher talk has been an important study by linguists and researchers both at home and abroad, for it is not only the medium for teachers to implement their teaching plan, but also a valuable source of input for language learners. A large number of scholars and linguists contribute to the study of teacher talk from various perspectives, with the results showing that teacher talk is closely related to learners’target language acquisition process. So far there have been many academic works entirely devoted to the analysis of teacher talk but the touch on the relationship between teacher talk and classroom interaction is rare, apart from few articles published. This study probes into the features of teacher talk and its effects on classroom interaction, which will give brief analysis on features of teacher talk and disclose the nature of classroom interaction between the teachers and learners, particularly with EFL class settings.The common methods of this study are observation and case studies. The participants of the present study were four EFL teachers from a university of Xi’an. The data presented in the study were mainly attained from on-the-spot classroom observations and the transcriptions of all the audio-recorded classes.This thesis is composed of five parts. The first chapter is the introduction part which gives a general description of the present study, including the background, the significance and the overall structure. Chapter two is the section of the literature review, which presents the fundamental concepts and some basic theories upon which this thesis has based. The third chapter describes the research methodology by explaining the research questions, research participants, instruments, the procedure of data collection and analysis. The fourth part of the thesis is the main body of the paper which answers the research questions one by one in accordance of the research data. The last chapter is the conclusion where the main findings are summarized and some implications and limitations are provided. The findings are summarized as follows:First, it has been found that in the EFL classes, the factual questions are often used by teachers especially when dealing with the topics. Besides, the evaluative and productive questions are mostly used during the real classroom interactions. The empirical questions are the types which are used least by teachers. Second, considering the features of teacher feedback, it has been found that the positive feedback is mostly used by teachers to build a relaxed atmosphere for their students, particularly when they encourage students to answer questions and participate in the discussion part. However, some simple and automatic feedback like "yes, good, wonderful" seems to be meaningless if teachers say too much to their students.Finally, with regard to the nature of classroom interaction and negotiation, the comprehension check and confirmation check seem to be the most highly used ways of negotiation. However, it has been found that the clarification check seems to be a better way for negotiation in class, for it can provide learners with much more chances to participate and practice.Limitations and suggestions for the future research are also discussed in the study. Some of the results obtained in the present study leave much to be verified and improved. It is hoped that overall and more accurate results would be obtained in the future research.