A Comparative Study On Teacher Talk Between Novice Teachers And Expert Teachers In High School English Class

Teacher talk is a hot topic in the current language teaching research. It is of crucial importance not only for the effective classroom management but also for the students’language acquisition. Based on Krashe’s Input Hypothesis, Swain’s Output Hypothesis and Long’s Interaction Hypothesis, this study aims to analyze the similarities and differences of teacher talk between two novice teachers and two expert teachers from a key high school in Hangzhou by means of classroom observation, interview and data analysis. The focus is laid on the discourse quantity, questioning types, interactional modification and feedback manners.The study yields the following findings. First of all, the teacher talk of the four participants is characterized by the real communication, logic, normalization and humor in teacher talk. Besides, in terms of discourse quantity, the amount of talk time of the four teachers in the study is less than that of traditional classroom teaching, which indicates the shift from teacher-centeredness to student-centeredness. However, some disparities still exist in students’talk time and classroom atmosphere. As for the questioning types, the expert teachers tend to raise more referential questions and accordingly, the novice teachers are prone to propose display questions. In aspect of the interaction modification, both two pairs of teachers do not favor confirmation checks. Novice teachers use more comprehension checks, while expert teachers would employ clarification requests most to promote the negotiation of meaning. Concerning feedback manner, discourse feedback is employed in higher proportion by expert teachers while novice teachers prefer to adopt evaluation feedback.Also, some suggestions are put forward on teachers’professional development and classroom teaching for high school English teachers. Firstly, teachers should change their teaching philosophy and continuously implement student-centered classroom teaching which can not only strengthen classroom interaction but also promote students’autonomous learning. Then, proper feedback should be used to activate students’motivation for language learning so as to promote students’ interaction. Lastly, novice teachers should realize the importance of teacher talk and make full use of teacher talk in the specific classroom-teaching environment to enrich classroom communication and interaction.