An Empirical Research On Teacher Talk In English Classroom Of Senior High Schools

Teacher talk is the main tool for classroom teaching and the major resource of input forlanguage learners. Teacher talk not only has a key role for classroom organization andmanagement,but also plays a decisive role in achieving the goal of language education. It can’tbe denied that classroom is the main site for students to receive comprehensible target languageinput. Thus teacher talk is of crucial importance in the process of students’ language learning andacquisition.This study was designed to investigate the status of the current high school English teacherclassroom discourse to investigate two aspects of teacher talk, that is the quantitative and thequalitative aspects of teacher discourse. The proportion of teacher talk and student talk in classrepresents the quantity of teacher talk. The qualitative aspect mainly refers to the interactionbetween teacher and students in the English classroom. Based on the status of current highschool English teacher classroom discourse, this thesis aims to find out the correlation betweenteacher talk and students’ outcomes which can be represented by students’ participation inclassroom interaction, students’ performance in English learning in class and students’ attitudestoward the teacher. It is hoped to provide implications and suggestions for high school Englishteachers which can help them pay attention to their own teacher talk, explore ways to promotestudents’ learning and achieve teaching goals by improving teacher talk.This research is based on Input hypothesis, Interaction hypothesis and two interactionanalysis systems which are FIAC and Flint. Input hypothesis claims that human acquire languageby understanding input which contains structure that are a bit beyond the current level ofcompetence. According to Interaction hypothesis, interactions and negotiation of meaning helpimprove our understanding of language and promote language acquisition. In addition, theinteraction analysis model employed in this study was refined and modified on the basis of FIACand Flint.Three research instruments were adopted in this study, including classroom observation,video-recording and questionnaire. Three teachers who are different in age and teachingexperience but all teach in English were chosen to participate in the research. Altogether30 reading lessons of senior high school were observed and recorded, each of which was45minutes.In order to investigate the effect of teacher talk on students’ outcomes in English, all the180students in classes of three teachers were involved in the survey of questionnaire. A total of178feedbacks from students were collected which were all valid. The video-recordings weretranscribed by the researcher and all the data collected in the research process were calculatedand processed by Excel. Comparisons of teacher talk and students’ outcomes among the threeclasses, including the similarities and differences, were the main part of the analysis of data fromwhich the results and conclusions of this study were drawn.Based on the the results of analysis and investigation, the researcher finds that thoughdifference exists among classes of the three teachers, on average teacher talk still occupies alarge proportion of the total talk in class. About70%of the total talk in class was teacher talk,which means teacher still dominates the English class. Students have few opportunities to speakand express their ideas even when asked to in these teacher-centered classes. The investigation ofclassroom interaction in three classes shows that among four main categories, the Generalteacher talk, the percentage of which was approximately60%of all the categories, was used themost by three teacher and Student talk followed after it with the percentage of occurrence ofmore than25%. The other two main categories, Positive teacher talk and Student non-verbalbehavior, had lower percentage of occurrence. The results also suggest that teacher talk do haveeffect on students’ outcomes. The more teacher use Positive teacher talk in English class, themore students would participate. On the contrary, the less teacher use Positive teacher talk, thefewer students would be involved in English class. Students in Teacher B’s class perform better,since they response more to the teacher, express their own ideas more and are more likely toexpress their lack of understanding verbally during class. Moreover, in classes where teacher canuse Positive teacher talk more, students’ attitudes toward the teacher will be more likely to bepositive and in classes where teacher uses Positive teacher talk less or doesn’t use Positiveteacher talk, students’ attitudes toward their teacher tend to be negative. All the results proved thevital importance of teacher talk, especially the Positive teacher talk, in senior high school duringlanguage teaching and learning.Some implications and suggestions were put forward to improve teacher talk based on theanalysis and discussions of the results. It is hoped that this study can draw more teachers’ attention to aware the importance of teacher talk, both the quantity and quality. Through themodification of their teacher talk, especially the use of positive teacher talk, students’participation in classroom interaction, students’ performance in English learning in classroomand their attitudes toward the teacher can be promoted and improved.