| English class is the main place for students to learn and practice English, andteacher talk in the class is the main media of teaching. Teacher talk also reflects theteacher’s basic quality and teaching ideas, as well as the process of teacher’sprofessional development. The study of teacher talk can help us to better understand thereal class and it is an important approach to study a teacher’s professional development.Not only the amount of teacher talk, the types of questions, teachers’ feedbacks and theinteractional modifications, but the language features of teacher talk, such asauthenticity, standardability, logicality and comprehensibility, should be involved in thestudy. This article attempts to study novice teachers’ and experienced teachers’classroom talk through a comparative analysis, and to identify similarities anddifferences in their use of teacher talk by observing the classes and analyzing therecords. Then novice teachers will know the way to improve the quality andeffectiveness of their talk, and their teaching skills and abilities can be improved.Based on the study of the research problems above, the following conclusions canbe drawn: Firstly, in junior middle school classroom teaching, experienced teachers’ talkis more clear and concise, and their talk time is less than novice teachers, whichprovides more opportunity for students’ language output, so a more positive classroomatmosphere can be created. Secondly, experienced teachers tend to increase theproportion of referential questions, and diversify the object. They also have morepatience to wait for students’ answers and ask more additional questions. Thirdly, noviceteachers use simple praise too much and sometimes they can’t deal with students’ errorscorrectly or apply various interaction patterns in their classes, while experiencedteachers tend to use more clarification requests or referential questions and they can useChinese in proper situations while teaching. What’s more, experienced teachers usemore standard, logical and authentic English in class.The study shows that in order to improve the quality of teacher talk and promotetheir own professional development, novice teachers should, first of all, broaden theirteaching view as well as the knowledge of the status and role of teachers in theclassroom. They should reduce the quantity and improve the quality of their talk in class,so students will receive more comprehensible input and produce more output in targetlanguage. Novice teachers should also use the methods of question and feedback properly, and make good use of all different interactional modes according to differentteaching situations and students’ level. Students can study better if teachers create agood study environment for them, and novice teachers can grow better to reach higherlevel of teaching if they develop such a habit as making regular reflections on theirteacher talk and behavior constantly. |
