A Study Of Teacher Feedback And Students’ Participation In Junior High School English Classroom

Teacher feedback, as an indispensable part of teacher talk, has played an important role in classroom teaching. Effective teacher feedback not only creates an intrinsic motivation and interest within the English learner, but also provides an important source of comprehensible input for the students. On the contrary, inappropriate teacher feedback can impede the classroom interaction and discourage students from actively participating in the classroom activities. Therefore, teachers need to use appropriate feedback strategies in order to ensure students’ learning achievement in class.Now certain amount of researches have been conducted on teacher feedback at home and abroad. However, on the whole, research participants are mainly senior high school students or university students and research focus is on teachers’corrective feedback. Little attention has been paid to the relationship between teacher feedback and students’ involvement in class. This study, based on the prior findings relating to teacher feedback, inquires into how teacher feedback influences students’ participation in junior high school English classroom. It aims to help teachers find more effective feedback types and promote students’ participation in class. The study intends to answer the following three questions:(1) What types of teacher feedback are used in junior high school English classroom? How often do teachers use them?(2) What are junior high school students’ attitudes towards teacher feedback in their class participation?(3) What are junior high school students’ preferences for teacher feedback in their class participation?Participants for this study are 160 students and 4 teachers in Grade 2 from Liang Daojie Middle School which is located in Wuhan. Questionnaire, classroom observation and interview are adopted as research instruments. It is found that English teachers don’t have a high frequency of feedback use in the class and they use simple praise to give feedback the most. A variety of feedback types are lacking in their feedback-giving process. The vast majority of students think that teacher feedback plays an important role in their English study. Moreover, effective teacher feedback will increase their motivation and promote their participation in English class. The study also finds that students have preferences for teacher feedback in their class participation. They hope that teachers can provide them with more positive feedback and offer a wide variety of feedback types such as eye feedback, and body language feedback. Thus, teachers must cater to students’ needs of feedback, which can improve the quality of teacher feedback and promote students’ English learning.Based on the findings of the research, the author tries to offer some suggestions on how to promote students’class participation through the use of teacher feedback. English teachers need to equip themselves with more corresponding theoretical and empirical knowledge of effective feedback and use different kinds of feedback types freely. Providing more positive feedback is also an important means. Most importantly, they should provide more valuable feedback according to students’ needs.