Power And Solidarity In Senior High English Teacher Talk

Teacher-student relationship is an eternal topic in education field. It proves that sound teacher-student relationship can facilitate teaching and learning. In class, the interaction between teachers and students mostly depends on language.According to System Functional Linguistics(SFL) by Halliday, interpersonal function is one of the three metafunctions of language. Teacher talk indeed plays an important role in establishing harmonious teacher-student relationship. This thesis aims to study the interpersonal meaning of senior high English teacher talk. In this theis, English teacher talk refers to all the spoken language English teacher use during English class to interact with students, not limited to the language of instruction. In detail, the study aims to explore the characteristics of senior high English teacher talk in class, the ways in which teacher talk influences the teacher-student relationship and students’ ideal teacher talk in six supposed situations through class observation, interview and questionnaire. For the characteristics of senior high English teacher talk, Appraisal Theory was applied to give a positive discourse analysis of the teacher talk, instead of criticizing all the time. The Appraisal Theory has three sub-systems: ATTITUDE,ENGAGEMENT and GRADUATION. For ATTITUDE, the study found six characteristics: empathizing with students, teachers’ self denial, highlighting students’ importance, expressing good expectations for students, the usage of polite language, and focusing on students’ own responsibility. For ENGAGEMENT, there are four characteristics: encouraging students to express opinions, welcoming different voices,dialosic contraction from question requirements and dialosic contraction from excessive affirmation. “Dialosic contraction” means that discourse power is inhibited.For GRADUATION, two characteristics are using “raise” and “sharpen” words to praise and using “lower” and “soften” words to criticize. Secondly, through combining Appraisal Theory, National Curriculum Standards for Senior high school and sharing stories from teachers and students, this study has concluded influences of power and solidarity in teacher talk on teacher-student relationship. For power influences,sometimes English teachers think students must have done something wrong and don’t give students chances to explain for themselves or to express their own opinions, which could make students feel wronged. For solidarity influences, there are four main positive influences: 1) maintaining students’ English learning desire and interests; 2)maintaining students’ right and lasting English learning motivation; 3) increasing students’ confidence in learning English; 4) helping students solve problems in learning English. If English teacher talk can have above positive influences, “solidarity” is established. Thirdly, the research found that, for positive situations, students like praise with “raise” and “sharpen” words. For negative situations, students don’t like directly strict criticism. They tend to accept positive guidance, chances and even teachers’ encouragement when they make a mistake. And the interpersonal meaning of English teacher talk needs further exploration.