A Study Of Teacher Talk In English Classroom At A Foreign Language Training School

English teaching has played a more important role in our country, because there is no ideal enviroment for students to say English. Teacher talk in English classroom has also drawn much attention of linguists and educators(Kraker, 2000). The ultimate goal of English teaching is to cultivate and improve students’ communicative abilities. Therefore, comprehensible input is the premise of English acquisition. Teacher talk is an important source of language input in classroom for foreign language learners to acquire the language.Teacher talk is not only the main medium of conveying information, but also an important means of organizing and regulating classroom teaching for teachers in the English class(Lei, 2009). Teacher talk plays an exemplary function of the target language, and the quantity and quality of teacher talk directly influences the outcome of classroom teaching in the language class. Therefore, a lot of studies of teacher talk in classrooms of public schools are conducted. The findings of these studies suggest that the quantity and quality of teacher talk has yet to be improved(Hu, 2007; Zhao, 1998; Zhou & Zhou, 2002). Nowadays, foreign language training schools especially the English training schools have already become important sites for students to learn foreign languages after the class or on weekends. Therefore, it is necessary to study the features of teacher talk in English classes in foreign language training schools.This study is based on the following three theoretical frameworks:(1) Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis;(2) Swain’s comprehensible output hypothesis;(3) Long’s interaction hypothesis. A foreign language training school is selected as the research site. This research mainly studies the quantity of teacher talk, types of questions asked by teachers, conversational structures and teachers’ feedback through classroom observation, interview and questionnaires.The findings of this study show that:(1) The teacher talk accounts for some 40% of the total classroom discourse;(2) Teachers’ talk tends to draw students’ interest and to promote the language output;(3) Teachers mainly ask reference questions to guide the students’ to think creatively;(4) Teachers give more positive and accurate feedback to students’ than the previous studies;(5) The reasons underlying these features are school’s requirements for teachers;(6) Students like the teacher talk in Dashan foreign language training school.In summary, the features of teacher talk in Dashan foreign language training school is different from the public schools. The main reason is that the principal and teacher give more attention to the teacher talk. Teachers in foreign language training schools mainly try their best to draw students’ interests. Interest is the best teacher for students to learn English. This thesis suggests that teachers should draw students’ interests through teacher talk in the English classroom.