A Study Of The Classroom Discourse Pattern In College English Reading Class From The Perspective Of The Dialogue Theory

With the implementation of newly-issued College English Curriculum Requirements (Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education of P. R. China,2007), college English class is gradually changing as well as the teaching philosophy of English teachers. In this context, the thesis tries to analyze the discourse features of college English reading class from the perspective of Bakhtin’s dialogue theory, with an aim to provide references and suggestions for college English teaching and its reform.The humanistic thought embodied in Bakhtin’s dialogue theory is profound. According to Bakhtin, dialogism is considered as the true nature of language and the essence of human existence as well, with basic characteristics like equality, diversity, openness, and ideology. Especially with the growing demand for English teaching reform, dialogic education has become the main theme of the times. In this regard, Bakhtin’s dialogue theory offers a brand-new perspective to analyze the dialogic class in which the teacher-student relationship is equal.In the case study of three teacher representatives in the Fourth National College English Teaching Contest held by SFLEP (Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press), four aspects of classroom discourse such as interaction patterns, turn-taking behaviors, question types, and feedback manners in college English reading classes are analyzed from the perspective of dialogue theory proposed by Bakhtin. Through a close study of the collected transcriptions and videos, the findings are summarized as follows:(1) Although the IRF pattern still accounts for the highest percentage among all the classroom discourse patterns, it is the other more complex patterns altogether that occupy the majority of the time in the class. (2) Turn taking behaviors are still under firm control of teachers while students’self-initiation case of seeking turns and maintaining the turn to talk do occur for several times in the class. (3)In terms of syntactic forms of question types, imperative sentences are seldom used by the teachers in classroom discourse; and display questions still tend to be predominant over referential questions in the classes. (4) Teachers tend to provide positive feedback, and adopt techniques such as probing and prompting to enlighten students.All of these findings reveal that the current college English reading classroom discourse patterns are still affected by the traditional teaching ideas and there is a lack of genuine and equal dialogue between teachers and students in the class. Some suggestions are then put forward to deal with the lack of dialogue in the class, with an aim to improve classroom discourse pattern, cultivate the consciousness of equal dialogue between teachers and students, and finally construct a foreign language teaching model in colleges.