A Study Of Teacher’s Feedback In Senior High School English Class

Teacher’s feedback refers to the co mments and information which teachers give to the students according to the perform ance and understanding of the knowledge o f the students and is a skill in foreign language classroom teaching based on the study of second language acquisition. It is the typ es of teach er’s feedback that influence students’ performance in the class. And thus, it is esse ntial for English teachers to figure out which types of teacher ’s feedback are be neficial for setting up a har monious and ef fective English class. Although a large number of scholars and professors have done many studies on teacher’s feedback, little attentio n is paid to the p resent situation investigation and study of teacher’s feedback in senior high schoo l English class. And th erefore, the author thinks that it is essential to investigate the present situation of teacher’s feedback, find out its features and weaknesses and give som e suggestions and implications about teacher ’s feedback.The theoretical foundations of the thesis are interaction hypothesis, scaffolding, input hypothesis, output hypothesis, th e affective filter hypothesis. On the foundation of the above theories, this thesis uses the appr oach of class observation, interview and questionnaire. The thesis is to try to give some suggestions a nd implications about teacher’s feedback according to the present s ituation of teacher’s feedback in Huangzhou NO.1 Senior High School.The research subjects are fi ve senior English teachers and their 276 students from Huangzhou No.1 Senior High School. Classroom observation, recording and transcription of teacher’s feedback in 17 English lessons by five teachers there were put into practice. In the above procedure, the author m ainly describes the types, occurrence frequency and functions of teacher’s feedback in the senior high school E nglish class and find o ut the features and weaknesses of teacher’s feedback. Besides, handing out questionnaires to the participant teachers and students and having interviews with them aimed at analyzing the students’ attitudes and needs towards teacher’s feedback.The above research demonstrated:1.The present teachers indeed use various types o f feedback in senior high school English cl ass. The thesis introduces the verbal and non-verbal feedback, but it mainly analyzes the verbal feedback. And positive feedback, negative feedback and discoursal feedback are classified in the observed teacher’s verbal feedback. Besides, simple praise, simple praise and repetition, positive repetition, giving awards and gifts and giving enthusiastic appl ause belong to the positive feedback. Also, the negative feedback includes explicit feedback and implicit feedback. In addition, direct correction, ignoring students’ responses, giving the right answ ers directly and nominating any other student belong to the explicit negative feedback. And prom pt feedback, elicitation, meta-linguistic, recast, clarificat ion request an d repetition belong to the implicit negative feedback. 2. Teacher’s feedback contains d ifferent functions. The m ain functions are promoting the interaction between the teachers and the students, motivating the students and correcting the students’ errors and m istakes.3. Different students have different attitudes towards teacher ’s feedback. Firstly, 30% of the interviewed stu dents express that they want to accept the direct correction from their English teachers because they are not good at English. Secondly, 25% of the interviewed students tell the researcher that they want their English teacher cares about their affect, and they just need confidence from the teacher. Thirdly, 20% of the res earched students answer that when they m ake mistake, the English teachers can ig nore the students’ answers but carrying on a delayed correction, which can give them self-esteem and solve their mistakes. Fourthly, 25% of the interviewed students hope to get some tips from their English teachers, when responding to teachers with mistakes and errors. 4. Features and weaknesses of teacher’s feedback are as follows: Firstly, the teachers in senior high school indeed use various types of teacher’s feedback in one or two English classes, wh ich can promote the students’ learning. This feature of teacher’s feedback has two sides although various types of feedback are used but not all are ef fective. Secondly, although there are various types of teacher’s feedback in the most of the English classes, the feedback isn’t flexible in a certain case. The positive feedback takes up the relatively highest frequency used in the class. The simple positive is not effective in long teaching period for the students, who need detailed explanation for the answers of the students.Thir dly, the teachers prefer to pay much attention to the for m of the students’ answers, such as the gram mar errors, the written errors and pronunciation errors and so on in English class rather than concentrate on the content and m eaning the students’ responses. Fourthly, the prom pt feedback, elicitation, cl arification request, meta-linguistic feedback, recast and negative repetition ar e not used suf ficiently in the English classes observed.After carefully thinking over th e current situation of teacher’s feedback in Huangzhou No.1 Senior High School, accord ing to SLA theories, such as Krashen’ s affective filter hypothesis, Swain’ s output hypothesis and L ong’s interaction hypothesis and so forth, the present research gives som e suggestions: Firstly, when the teacher gives feedback, they should have the aim of im proving the language pe rformance of their students due to Input Hypothesis. Secondly, when giving feedback to the students, it will be wise for the Englis h teacher to consider different characteristics of their students carefully. That is th e student-centered view must be m astered by the English teachers.Thirdly, the students’ affect which includes motivation, interest and attitudes and so forth are im portant factors, wh ich needs the teacher’s careful th inking when giving feedback. Fourthly, the rethinking over the teacher ’s feedback after each class can be an effective way to rectify and improve the teacher’s feedback timely. In the end, the English teacher not only needs to give the positive feedback, but also ne eds to use both of the explicit feedback and implicit negative feedback, because they both have their advantages in class. The author should combine the positive feedback and negative feedback together.