A Case Study Of Teacher Verbal Feedback In Senior High School English Classes

Although nowadays Chinese senior high school students have more ways of approaching English, classroom still remains as the main place of acquisition for English learners, especially for senior high schools students, who have relatively limited chances to use English outside classrooms. Therefore, English teachers play a very critical role in the course of student’s foreign language learning.As a big part of teacher talk during English classroom interaction, teacher feedback is gaining more and more attention form researchers and scholars. Appropriately used, teacher feedback can help to arouse student’s interest in learning and make them more willing to interact with teachers, and at the same time it can facilitate student’s English learning process.Focusing on verbal feedback, three research questions concerning the amount of teacher feedback,the frequency of positive feedback and negative feedback and student’s preference for teacher feedback are discussed in this paper, including:1. The percentage of teacher feedback in the total amount of teacher talk in high school English classroom in Yuncheng No.2Middle School.2. Positive and negative, prompt and delayed teacher feedback in high school English classroom in Yuncheng No.2Middle School.3. Student’s preferences towards feedback. In the research design, four English teachers and204senior high school grade two students are chosen as the subjects.Some findings of the research are concluded as below:As to the findings of the amount of teacher feedback, they are frequently used in senior high school English learning classrooms. But relatively speaking, many young teachers tend to provide less feedback to students. One possible explanation is their lack of experience in dealing with answers from students. As to the types of feedback, the finding is that in most cases positive feedback is more favored by the teachers compared with negative feedback. This may indicate that most senior high school teachers regard positive feedback as better ways to respond to students as they can protect student’s feeling and increase their confidence. As a result, negative feedback like direct correction is rarely offered. At last, in terms of student’s preferences, one finding is almost half of the students expect their teachers to provide a clue and do self-repair. On the other hand, students with various English proficiencies, personalities and views often have different preferences toward teacher feedback, making it difficult to get a rule that applies to all students. But here one suggestion is put forward, which is it will always be a wise choice for the teachers to treat all students as one individual with his or her own characteristics instead of adopting some general rules in giving feedback.