An Investigation On Junior High School English Teachers’ Criticism Speech Act In ELT Classroom

Criticism is one of the most frequently performed speech acts but there is relative paucity of researchon the use of the speech act and its effect in English language teaching. Therefore, this thesis is based onthe speech act theory of Austin and Searle, Leech s politeness principle and Brown and Levinson s Facetheory. The author addressed the following three questions:1. What strategies are adopted by junior high school English teachers when they criticize students?2. To what extent English teachers criticism strategies have an effect on students language learning?3. What are the English language learners attitudes towards their teachers use of criticism strategies?A total of268junior students and two English teachers from No.3Qin an Middle School of TianshuiCity were involved in the present study. According to the collecting natural criticism events, and the resultsof questionnaire survey, the above three problems were studied. The results as follows:The junior high school English teachers employ12criticism strategies, which are insulting,punishment, complaining, stroking, deliberately silence, satire, persuasion, humor, hint, encouragementinstead of criticism, contrast and warning. And these strategies can be divided into two types: on recordcriticism and off record criticism. There are five strategies in on record criticism, i.e.insulting, punishment,complaining, satire and warning. And stroking, deliberately silence, persuasion, humor, hint,encouragement instead of criticism and contrast those strategies are divided into off record criticism. On allsorts of criticism strategies of frequency statistics found that the criticism itself is a threat to the students face, most of junior English teachers use indirect speech acts considering the student’s face, and persuasionaccounts the most frequency.In order to investigate students attitudes towards their teachers use of criticism strategies, through thevalid questionnaires survey on students and the results showed that most students think teachers criticaldiscourse has great, big, common and small influence on them. Students think teachers critical discoursehas no influence on them is little. Criticism speech act itself is a threat to hearers face, these behaviors canaffect the students’ inner experience. If the teachers use criticism suitably, it will be a very positive impactfor students.In students perspectives, by the valid questionnaires survey, students tend to choose indirect criticismin these aspects: the issue of ideas and concepts, life s attitude, emotional problem, character personalityproblem, interpersonal relationship problem, learning theoretical innovation, the behavior problem, and the subjective question answer wrong. While those aspects: learning strategies, learning attitude, the ability oflearning, the expression problem, the objective question answer wrong and the classroom performance,students tend to select direct criticism employed by teachers.This study has both theoretical and practical significance. In the criticizing process, if a suitable andconstructive criticism strategy could be chosen, it not only can strengthen mutual understanding and fosterharmonious interpersonal relations, but also solve the problem efficiently.