A Study On The Effectiveness Of English Classroom Teaching In Senior High School From The Perspective Of Classroom Discourse Analysis

The study on classroom discourse of English teachers has won a significant place in foreign languages research both in China and abroad with deeper research on the effectiveness of English classroom teaching. Because the classroom discourse is not only the basic and important approach in English teaching to English teacher, but also the target language and essential source of language input to students. Besides that, there is a fact that most students of senior high school in China have little or no chance to use English as soon as they leave the English classroom, at least to the students in ethnic minority areas.The earlier studies on classroom discourse of English teachers were in the 1990 s. Although great progress both in theoretical exploration and empirical research has been made in past few years, the researches were more devoted to English teachers’ classroom discourse in colleges or universities. Later, quite a lot studies on the classroom discourse in senior high school were based on open classes, language corpus, and selected from developed areas. That is to say, the regular and authentic classroom discourse of English teachers in senior high school from ethnic minority areas draws little attention.This thesis did the study based on the criteria of Cheng Xiaotang’s effectiveness criterion and the New English Curriculum Standard, which was built upon the theories that Krashen’s input hypothesis, Long’s interaction hypothesis, Swain’s output hypothesis, and the theory of ZPD. Through the classroom observation and data analysis of transcription to four English regular classes of four English teachers in senior high school from ethnic minority areas, this thesis analyzed seven classroom discourse’s features of ineffective English classroom teaching based on the Zhu Hongcui’s evaluation form, including,(1) The amount of English teachers’ discourse held an absolute dominant position, besides; Chinese was mainly used as classroom discourse of English teachers.(2) There were a lot of modal particles in classroom discourse.(3) The classroom discourse of English teachers consisted of fragmented and single expressions and sentences.(4) The classroom discourse of English teachers had some unnecessary repetitions.(5) There existed logical problem on English teachers’ classroom discourse.(6) The questioning almost adopted display questions and simple questions types as yes-no question and translation question, focusing on the knowledge review.(7) The classroom discourse of English teachers lacked rich assessments. This thesis put forward the possible reasons causing the ineffective classroom teaching from the perspective of classroom discourse analysis, and some implications for improving English teachers’ classroom discourse and the effectiveness of English classroom teaching.