An Empirical Study Of Teacher Talk In College English Class

Teacher talk is the main method and medium for teachers to conduct their classroom teaching. It also reflects the process and approach of classroom teaching (Cheng Xiaotang2009). Nunan (1991:189) points out that in English classroom, teacher talk is not only a tool for organizing classroom teaching, but also a major source of learners’ comprehensible input of the target language. The quality and quantity of teacher talk influence, to a great extent, the effect of English classroom teaching (Hakansson1986).At the beginning of the1970s, many overseas scholars began to research teacher talk. In the1980s, most of the researches on teacher talk focused on teaching language. In the1990s, with increasing knowledge of language acquisition process and the role communication plays in classroom teaching,"Teacher Research" was advocated by some scholars (Edge&Richards1998; Crooks1993) and they have systematically researched Second Language Classroom in order to further their understanding of teaching and learning. They explored the existing problems in second language acquisition and make an intensive study of teacher language and behavior. In recent years, researchers have carried out a number of studies in China concerning the teaching and learning process in EFL classroom. However, there are few papers about foreign language teachers, and only several papers involve teacher talk in English classroom teaching. There are fewer papers concerning teacher talk in minority universities. The author intends to provide reference for relevant researches through analyzing and studying the characteristics of teacher talk in minority universities.Four College English teachers are observed in this study. The author builds the study on such theories as "Input Hypothesis","Interaction Hypothesis" and "Output Hypothesis". Naturalistic inquiry is adopted. The author observes and records the classroom teaching process and hands out the questionnaires in these four teachers’ classes respectively. Then the author analyzes the data of the questionnaire by using SPSS16.0and transcribes the classroom audio recording. On the basis of the data, the characteristics of teacher talk are analyzed and described and at the same time, useful and effective measures are proposed to help improve teacher talk in College English classroom.The study investigates and analyzes teacher talk in College English class from such aspects as the amount of teacher talk:the percent of display questions and referential questions respectively; teachers’interactional modifications and the percentage of comprehension checks, confirmation checks and clarification request respectively; teachers’feedback and error treatment.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is introduction. Research background, purpose and significance of the present study are introduced in this part. The second chapter is literature survey of the studies on discourse analysis and teacher talk which have been conducted at home and abroad. The definition of teacher talk and theoretical foundation of the study are also involved in this part. In Chapter Three the methodology of the study is briefly stated. A detailed description and analysis of teacher talk are made in Chapter Four. The last chapter will draw a conclusion and put forward some suggestions for how to improve English classroom teacher talk.