A Comparative Study Of Teacher Talk In High School Demo Class And Regular Class

It is crucial that teacher talk should be of great importance for the organization ofclassroom teaching and language acquisition, which is not only because by excellentteacher talk and suitable instructing teaching may have an ideal end, but also teachertalk is the most necessary approach to language input for students (Nunan,1991).That is to say, whether the classroom teaching is a success or not is decided by thequantity and quality of teacher talk (Hakansson,1986). With the development of thestudy of SLA (Sencond Language Acquisition), studies on functions of teacher talkand classroom interactional features have attracted attention of scholars in the field inthe past thirties years. Recently, there have been rich studies on the amount of teachertalk, the types of questioning, the frequency of interaction switch and its percentage inthe context of Chinese classroom teaching. But the study of TTT (teacher talk time)should be attached great importance to (Huang,2009).The previous studies show that teacher talk is mainly carried out qualitativelyfrom the perspectives of language teaching and linguistics, focusing on the amount ofteacher talk, the types and frequencies of questioning, interactional ways, feedback,etc, teacher talk time is also included. However, the studies are more descriptive onthe amount, lack in quantitative analysis of the distribution of teacher talk time(Davies,2011). Besides, the studies show that the more teacher talk time, the lessopportunities for students’ language output, therefore, classroom teaching will be lesseffective (Paul,2003). This thesis chooses two types of classes: regular class anddemo class as the research subjects. Based on discourse analysis, using the qualitativeand quantitative methods, this study made a comparative study of high school democlass and regular class, trying to answer two questions:(1) What are the differences ofthe distribution of teacher talk time between high school demo class and regular class?(2) What are the differences of the features of teacher talk between high school democlass and regular class?Four demo lessons are chosen from the video of Demo Lessons for the EighthNational High School English Teaching. The other four regular lessons are from onekey high school from Changchun, Jilin.The results show that there are some differences on the distribution on TTT inthe part of instructing texts, lead-in, explaining grammar, organizing activities. First, compared with regular class, distribution of teacher talk time follows a certain patternin demo class. The teacher talk time, which is distributed in the same part of the class,is basically even for the four teachers. Second, as for the total teacher talk time, it isshorter in demo classes than that in regular classes. Third, the teacher talk timechanges among four teaching parts. In demo classes, instructing text part takes thelongest time of teacher talk time while explaining language points in regular classes.The features of teacher talk are: first, teacher talk in demo class is more effectiveand compendious than in regular class. Second, in demo class, teacher tries to avoidcode-mixing. But in regular class, teacher will use Chinese to explain language points.Third, from the view point of choosing language, teacher’s guiding talk in demo classis more than in regular class. Forth, the feedback in demo class is various and to thepoint. While in regular class, the feedback is one fold.