A Comparative Study Of The Classroom Feedback Of English Teachers In Junior Middle Schools

Teachers’ classroom feedback mainly refers to teachers’ oral response to students’ answers through various forms of expression, such as recognition, negation, correction, etc. in classroom teaching activities. Teachers’ classroom feedback is not only a bidirectional interaction between teachers and students, but also a key link which can promote the harmony and unification of teaching and learning. According to the literature, most of the studies about classroom feedback have been carried out in western countries, whereas in China, the studying on the teachers’ classroom feedback started quite late. Despite the fact that much progress has been achieved in this field, the researches on classroom feedback of English teachers in junior middle schools are relatively less. So it is both necessary and important to have a further tentative look at the teachers’ classroom feedback in English teaching in order to increase the effectiveness of English teachers’ classroom feedback in junior middle schools.In this paper, the author selected four English teachers randomly including two female teachers and two male teachers from The 10 th National Demonstration Junior English Classroom Teaching Cases. On the other hand, the author selected another four teachers(two female and two male) from Yantai No.4 Middle School as research subjects. The author did a comparative study on the similarities and differences of the classroom feedback of the two types of teachers by mainly adopting classroom observation method.The main research questions include the followings:(1) What are the differences in the general types of classroom feedback in terms of single feedback and complex feedback?(2) What are the differences in single feedback?(including positive feedback, repetition, restate, explicit correction, clarification request, meta-linguistic feedback, extension, evaluation)(3) What are the differences in complex feedback?(including positive feedback plus repetition, positive feedback plus evaluation, positive feedback plus recast, repetition plus clarification request, repetition plus Meta-linguistic feedback, repetition plus extension, repetition plus evaluation)The major findings are as follows:(1) The single feedback used by the demonstration class teachers accounts for 65% of their total classroom feedback, but that of the common teachers accounts for 77.7% of their classroom feedback. The complex feedback of the demonstration class teachers accounts for 35% of their classroom feedback, but that of the common teachers accounts for 22.3%. It can be seen that these eight junior middle school English teachers use more single feedback than complex feedback. The demonstration class teachers use more complex feedback than the four common teachers.(2) For the demonstration class teachers, the frequencies of different types of single feedback used rank from high to low are: positive feedback(55%)repetition(22%) explicit correction(9%)extension(4%)recast(3%) elicitation(3%)clarification request(2%)evaluation(1%)meta-linguistic feedback(1%). Those frequencies of common teachers rank from high to low are: positive feedback(59%)repetition(17%)explicit correction(15%)extension(3%)recast(2%) clarification request(2%)elicitation(1%)evaluation(1%)meta-linguistic feedback(1%). It shows that there is no big difference in the use of single feedback. Comparatively speaking, there are more differences in the usage of explicit correction. It can be seen that the common teachers use explicit correction more frequently than the demonstration class teachers.(3) In terms of different categories of the complex feedback, the frequencies of the demonstration class teachers rank from high to low are: positive feedback plus repetition(53%)repetition plus extension(15%)positive feedback plus recast(10%)positive feedback plus evaluation(10%) repetition plus clarification request(4%) repetition plus evaluation(3%)repetition plus meta-linguistic feedback(3%). In contrast, the frequencies of the common teachers rank from high to low are: positive feedback plus repetition(69%)repetition plus extension(11%)positive feedback plus recast(6%)repetition plus evaluation(6%)repetition plus clarification request(5%)positive feedback plus evaluation(4%) repetition plus meta-linguistic feedback(0%). In can be seen that there are obvious differences in the frequencies of different types of complex feedback between these teachers. It shows that the demonstration class teachers use different types of complex feedback in a more varied way, and they are better at using effective feedback in different situations to stimulate students’ output and improve classroom interaction.