An Empirical Study Of Metalanguage In Teacher Talk In College English Reading Class

With the development of linguistic and second language acquisition theories, College English teaching and research in China has been experiencing broad and profound changes.Being a significant part in classroom discourse, teacher talk has always been the focus for foreign language researchers both at home and abroad. Recent years, although numerous scholars have made a large number of studies on teacher talk in foreign language class,studies made on another significant part of teacher talk—metalanguage are quite insufficient.Based on the research results of metalanguage and foreign language teaching at home and abroad, starting from metalanguage in teacher talk, this thesis attempts to investigate the detailed manifestation ways and contents of metalanguage in College English class, so as to analyze the functions and roles that metalanguage in teacher talk plays in College English reading class.This paper applies the method of case study, randomly selects the teaching videos of the five odd rankings in the final competition of the Fourth National College English Teaching Contest held by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. With the help of the teaching PPTs,the teaching videos are observed and transcribed as the data,analyzed from the aspects of language types, sentence patterns, detailed contents and functions of metalanguage, and based on which its implications on improving foreign language teaching quality are summarized. This study attempts to answer the following research questions: 1) In College English reading class, what types of language are there in metalanguage in teacher talk? 2) .What are the features of sentence patterns of the metalanguage in teacher talk? 3) What is the content of metalanguage in teacher talk? 4)What are the functions of metalanguage in teacher talk?The study reveals the following findings: 1) in College English reading class,metalanguage includes English metalanguage and Chinese metalanguage. English metalanguage occupies the most of the class time while Chinese supports it; 2)metalanguage in teacher talk adopts several types of sentence patterns, most of which are declarative and interrogative sentences; 3) metalanguage in teacher talk includes metalanguage used to interpret new words, metalanguage used to interpret text and metalanguage used in classroom interaction; 4) metalanguage in teacher talk plays several functions in College English reading class, including cultivating students' metalinguistic awareness and metalinguistic ability, helping teachers instruct metalinguistic knowledge better, and promoting interpersonal interaction and class management.Through the research results,it can be seen that metalanguage is knowledge as well as an effective teaching instrument. Therefore, this paper provides several suggestions based on the functions and roles that metalanguage plays in College English class so as to improve College English teaching and further promote the development of foreign language teaching via the proper use of metalanguage.