Classroom Discourse Analysis Of Veteran And Student English Teachers In Junior High School

Teachers’ classroom discourse is of crucial importance, especially in EFL class, for it is both the teaching tool and the teaching content. Teachers’ classroom discourse has been a focus of foreign language teaching research. In China, previous studies mainly analyze in-service college English teachers’ discourse by paraphrasing theoretical model abroad. The present study tries to find out similarities and differences between veteran teachers’ and student teachers’ English classroom discourse in junior high school under Gu Yueguo’s model of situated discourse analysis, concentrating on how veteran teachers and student teachers achieve their teaching goals, develop their talk exchange and manage interpersonal relationship.To finish the research, two veteran teachers and two student teachers from a junior high school of Xi’an City are chosen to be participants, their classes are observed and videotaped, the videos are transcribed, and then the transcripts are analyzed in detail from the aspects of goal development, talk exchange development and interpersonal management.Based on the analysis, major findings of the present study are summarized as follows:firstly, as for goal development, both veteran teachers and student teachers perform effective leading-in activities, organize progressive tasks, summarize important knowledge, and then achieve linguistic goals basically. Veteran teachers present teaching goals clearly and directly during pre-class preparation and achieve multidimensional goals, while student teachers emphasize linguistic knowledge and skills, sometimes ignoring emotional, cultural and strategic ones. Secondly, as to talk exchange development, veteran teachers give concise, precise, logical and clear directives, perform demonstrations or speak the native language to assist teaching, give positive feedback, and improve students’ performance indirectly to maintain their learning faith and enthusiasm; however, student teachers sometimes give illogical, redundant, unreadable or inconsistent directives and correct students’ errors directly. Thirdly, veteran teachers maintain the cooperative relationship and create a kind of relaxed and harmonious atmosphere, while the atmosphere of student teachers’ classes is a little unpleasant and nervous.According to the findings, some implications can be given as follows:Firstly, effective leading-in, progressive activities, and timely summary are necessary to linguistic goal achievement. Student teachers should place same emphasis on the five aspects of curriculum objects and present teaching goals more clearly and directly. What’s more, student teachers should learn to give concise, precise, logical, and clear directives, give demonstrations or use mother tongue if necessary, give more positive feedback, and correct students’ errors more moderately to increase their confidence or enthusiasm. Finally, student teachers should learn to manage interpersonal relationship and create a more relaxed and fair learning environment. Above all, student teachers ought to combine pedagogical theories with teaching practice, learn from veteran teachers, and improve classroom discourse in teaching practice.Limitations and suggestions are also presented, looking forward to overall and more accurate results in further research.