Research On Teacher Talk In Public English Class In Higher Vocational College

Teacher talk is not only a medium for teacher to carry out the teaching plan and to organize classroom teaching activities, but also one of main sources for language learners to acquire comprehensible target language, especially for those who learn language in a non-authentic language environment. The quantity and quality of language teacher's talk have a great impact on the success or failure of language teaching and learning in class. Currently, the research of teacher talk is still in its infancy in China. Some empirical researches about teacher talk have been made, mostly involving university or middle school English class. However, little has been conducted in the context of the higher vocational college.The present study was conducted under the guidance of Krashen's Comprehensible Input Theory, Swain's Output Theory and Long's Interaction Theory. Based on the features of higher vocational public English teaching and its current situation, this study wants to seek answer to the following questions:(1) ratio of TT (teacher talk) in class talk, (2) ratio of MT (mother tongue) in TT, (3) how teachers instruct teaching content by TT in class, (4) how teachers organize class activities by TT, including questioning, offering feedback and error-correcting.The subjects involved were 7 teachers and their 368 students from Chizhou Vocational and Technical College.8 periods class recordings were made. One period was about forty-five minutes. Then, the recorded materials were transcribed. Meanwhile,368 students were asked to answer the student-questionnaire on TT in class under their English teachers' guidance.16 teachers including those 7 teachers finished the teacher-questionnaire. The student-questionnaire composed of 22 items on the basis of Zhou Xing & Zhou Yun's questionnaire (2002). The teacher-questionnaire was made up of 15 items according to Liu Yuhui & Chen Hao's questionnaire (2012). The total of valid student-questionnaire was 290, and the teacher-questionnaire was 16. The findings of the questionnaires offered some support to the results of the transcript analysis.The findings are concluded as follows:The ratio of TT is much higher than ST(student talk), the former accounts for 74.8% of total class time, while the latter only accounts for 8%. The teachers use more native language than the students expect, which accounts for 72% of total amount of TT. What's more, teachers mainly adopt explanatory and performing TT to instruct teaching content. Concerning teacher questions, display questions, accounting for 94% of all teacher questions, are used much more frequently than referential questions. As to the frequency of various types of teacher feedback, it is reported all teachers and students under investigation prefer positive feedback than negative one. The most often offered positive feedback is short and simple praise, but what the students prefer is making comments after praising offered by their teachers. In terms of error-correcting, all the teachers prefer leading students to make self-correcting after their errors repeated, which is also in line with the expectations of 70% of the students under investigation.Some implications have been drawn from the findings of the present study. Based on these findings, the thesis put forward some suggestions. The first is that teachers should fully realize the importance of their talk in class and strive to improve their talk. The second is that teachers should moderate their amount of TT and MT, and try their best to give students more chances to output English. The third is that teachers should ask more referential questions in class. The fourth is that teachers should create a more positive class atmosphere for students and make positive comment on students' response, etc.