A Study On Teacher Talk In English Reading Classes In Senior Middle Schools

As teachers are the organizers and controllers of classroom teaching, teacher talk plays a pivotal role in teaching process. Thus, it attracts universal attention from linguists and educators both at home and abroad. Teacher talk refers to the language used by teachers in classroom teaching. In the1960s, it began to be an independent area for research. In China, learners learn English mainly in class and rely much on it. Recently, as one of the important resources of students’language input, English teacher talk attracts more and more attention and researches. However, these researches mainly concentrate on the analysis of teacher talk in college English classes, or on analysis and investigation in one aspect of teacher talk in middle school English classes. Comparatively, there are fewer researches which study teacher talk in middle school English classes as a whole.Therefore, the present study is carried out on the basis of Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, Long’s Interaction Hypothesis and Swain’s Output Hypothesis. It analyzes and investigates teacher talk which is divided into teacher’s questioning, directive, instruction and feedback through the observation and analysis of8English teachers’ talk in reading classes of Grade One. In addition, it tries to find out answers to the following four questions:1. How much amount of time do the four subcategories of teacher talk respectively occupy, and what are their frequencies?2. What are the students’ responses to teacher talk, including their attitudes, evaluations and expectations?3. What are the main functions of teacher talk distributed in English language teaching?4. What are the effects of teacher talk, considering from four aspects namely authenticity, interaction, logicality and standardization?In this study,8English teachers of Grade One from Taihe Middle School of Jiangxi Province are observed, and their talk in reading classes is recorded for two months. What’s more, the8teachers and their421students are invited to finish corresponding questionnaires. The data from questionnaires are analyzed by SPSS19.0(Statistical Package for the Social Science), and the statistics from transcriptions of audio recordings are analyzed by EXCEL. Through the analysis of the data, the major findings are concluded as the following:1. Generally speaking, teacher’s instruction accounts for the largest proportion of the total number of teacher talk.2. Students’ expectations of teacher talk are generally in concordance with their evaluations.3. The four parts of teacher talk play their own roles in a class, which work as a whole and contribute to achieving specific teaching aims.4. The teacher talk observed basically has authenticity, interaction, logicality and standardization.This thesis has the following theoretical and practical significance. Theoretically, an investigation and analysis of teacher talk in current senior English reading classes helps to expand the research field of teacher talk to some extent and make the research process continue to move forward. Practically, on the one hand, the present study helps teachers better understand the importance of teacher talk to students’ learning and be more sensitive to teacher talk in teaching, which better promotes the development of teachers and students. On the other hand, it helps teachers reflect on their own classroom teaching language, find out the problems and improve the quality of teacher talk, which will ameliorate the current situation of senior English classroom teaching in China.