An Analysis Of Teacher Talk From The Perspective Of Qualia

Studies of teacher talk(TT) have received much emphasis in foreign language education research at home and abroad. Many scholars have stepped into this field; however, they have focused on amounts of TT, mother tongue and target language arrangement, speech rate of TT, types of question, waiting time, feedbacks, and pragmatics approaches to TT. Although some papers have discussed the quality of TT, giving some suggestions to improve the quality of TT, there is no evidence that the content of TT has been analyzed. According to the analyses of teacher talk from the perspective of qualia, the author tries to explore what type of teacher talk can attract students' attention, arouse their interest, reduce students' high anxiety, and cultivate a happy and relaxing learning atmosphere for students.Quale is one of the core issues of the philosophy of mind. Qualia are phenomenal properties which are embedded in the object itself. The subject can experience the feature of “what-it-is-likeness” of physical properties. The interpretation of language is similar to the experience of qualia. The following three questions about teacher talk are raised from the perspective of qualia:1. What type of teacher talk may result in quale-sense?2. Does teachers' academic level have an effect on providing teacher talk from the perspective of qualia?3. Does students' language proficiency have an effect on the interpretation of teacher talk from the perspective of qualia?In theory, the author combines qualia, teacher talk, and qualia structure to constitute the “the qualia triangle” to prove the feasibility of qualia for interpreting teacher talk. In practice, the author chooses the College English launched by Hunan University and Xiangtan University in website(http://www.icourses.cn/), whose teaching videos are selected to be transcribed into text versions. Based on the data collected from video-recorded materials, there exists a significant positive correlation between teachers' academic level and the amount of teacher talk from the perspective of qualia. The higher academic level the teachers have, the more attention will be attached to the interaction between students and teachers, and the appropriate activities. Besides, tests of teacher talk from the perspective of qualia, formed into a questionnaire, are carried out among 20 postgraduates and 20 undergraduates from Sichuan International Studies University, whose scores indicate that postgraduates have done a better job than undergraduates. Finally, the author invites two teachers who are an experienced teacher and a new-hand teacher to share their thoughts about teacher talk and qualia.In foreign language education, in order to make teacher talks result in the utmost effect, teachers should take students' language proficiency into consideration, when they provide teacher talk from the perspective of qualia. What's more, the perspective of qualia can also provide significance and value for teachers' training and teachers' self-development.