A Study Of Teacher Talk In English Teaching Of Senior High School

Teachers are constantly important guides and models to the students, regardlessof their level or major. Therefore, teacher talk has a great effect on students.Especially, the classroom language of English teachers is of the most vital importance,because their talk is not only the major way of imparting knowledge to the students,but also the main source of students’ comprehensive target language input. Whetherthe learners’ language acquisition is successful or not may largely depend on theeffectiveness of teacher talk.In recent years, more and more linguists and researchers pay attention to teachertalk. They have carried out a great number of researches on it. Their researches onteacher talk have largely focused on college English teaching, but the researches insenior high school are quite few. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the features ofteacher talk in English teaching of senior high school and provide some pedagogicalsuggestions for the English teachers on what type of talk is effective on learners’learning. It also hopes to help teachers to realize the importance of teacher talk so asto improve the quality of their talk.The investigation involved five teachers and424students, who came fromBaZhou No.5Middle School. The instruments adopted in this study include:classroom observation, student questionnaire and teacher interview. The questionnairewas based on Zhou&Zhou (2002) and composed of fourteen items. The authorinvestigated and analyzed the features of teacher talk in senior high school from thefollowing aspects:(1) the amount of teacher talk and student talk and the frequency ofteachers’ using Chinese and English (2) the frequency of display questions andreferential questions and the distribution of teachers’ questions (3) the frequency ofthree types of praises and the frequency of four types of error treatment (4) thefrequency of three types of interactional modification.After comparing and analyzing the data obtained from classroom observation,student questionnaire and teacher interview, the findings are summarized as follows: (1) In terms of amount of teacher talk and student talk, the results show that theamount of teacher talk (71.5%) surpasses that of student talk (13%). In terms of thefrequency of teachers’ using Chinese and English, the results show that Chinese(77.2%) far exceed English (22.8%).(2) Concerning the frequency of display questions and referential questions, theresults indicate that there is a priority of display questions (81%) over referentialquestions (19%). Concerning the distribution of questions, the results indicate thatteachers prefer to ask the students who sitting in front rows or having good marks toanswer questions.(3) As to the frequency of three types of praises, the results show that teacherstend to use “simple praises”(59.7%) to praise their students. The second wayfrequently used by the teachers is “repetition of responses followed by praises”(29.7%). However, the most effective way of praises:“praises followed by appraisals"(10.6%.) is not frequently used by the teachers. As to four types of error treatment,the results show that teachers tend to use “explicit correction”(57%) to correctstudents’ errors, followed by “asks another student to answer instead”(27%).Whereas, the other two effective ways of error correction:"providing a clue andexpecting self-repair"(12%) and “ignoring and correcting later"(4%) are shunned bythe five teachers.(4) Relating to the frequency of three types of interactional modification, theresults demonstrate that “comprehension checks”(81%) is frequently used by teachersin the process of interactional modification, followed by “confirmation checks”(16.2%). However, in contrast to the high frequency of the use of “comprehensionchecks”,“clarification requests”(2.8%) is the least frequently used type ofinteractional modification by teachers.Based on the findings of the study, the following suggestions are provided onsenior high school English teaching:(1) In terms of amount of teacher talk and student talk, teachers should minimizeteachers’ talk time and encourage students to speak more. In terms of the frequency ofteachers’ using Chinese and English, teachers should speak English as much as possible and provide a rich target language environment for students.(2) Concerning the frequency of display questions and referential questions,teachers should ask more referential questions and increase two-way flow ofinformation. Concerning the distribution of questions, teachers should distributequestions to every student.(3) As to the frequency of three types of praises, teachers should provide moreeffective feedback. They should not only praise students but also point out howappropriate the students’ answers are. As to four types of error treatment, teachersshould correct students’ errors properly. They should provide them some clues andexpect them to correct the errors themselves.(4) Relating to the frequency of three types of interactional modification,teachers should use “clarification requests” to solve the communication problems andinvolve the students more in interactional modificationThough the author tried her best to complete the present study, there are somelimitations in this thesis. The results leave much to be improvement in this thesis. Theauthor will try her best to do the work better in the future.