A Contrastive Study Of Teacher Talk Of Middle School And College English Teachers From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

In recent decades, discourse analysis has attracted much attention of linguists at home and abroad. Classroom discourse analysis,in particular,is a hot research topic. The interpersonal meaning of language reflects how people establish and maintain social relationship with each other during communication, which indicates speakers' social identity. The interpersonal meaning in the English class refers to the effective interaction between teachers and students. By conveying interpersonal meaning, teachers can stimulate students' learning motivation and create a positive class atmosphere, then promote classroom teaching.This paper adopts Appraisal theory as a guiding theory and employs both quantitative and qualitative method for corpus processing. The corpus comes from three middle English classes from the 10th National High-quality English Competition for Middle School Students and three college English classes from the integrated group in the fourth SFLEP(Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press) National Foreign Language Contest. After transcribing all the recordings and annotating the appraisal resources, the author tries to compare and analyze the similarities and differences of the appraisal resources in Teacher Talk between middle English class and college English class, and find out how the appraisal resources are used by English teachers to shorten the distance between teachers and students, inspire their learning motivation and then improve teaching.The similarities and differences of the appraisal resources in Teacher Talk between middle English classes and college English classes are as follows:(1) In both middle English class and college English class, there are many appraisal resources and they share the same distribution characteristics: Attitude resource is the most frequently used, the Engagement resource takes the second place, and the number of Graduation resource is the least. So the Attitude serves as the core system in the Appraisal theory.(2) From the total amount of appraisal resource point of view, there are 581 appraisal resources in college English class, which is much more than 427 appraisal resources in middle English class. This distribution characteristics is determined by different stages of students' development.(3) There are 68 more Attitude resources in college English class than that in middle English class, but the proportion of Attitude resource in middle English class is 2% higher than that in college English class. College students' affective needs and cognitive ability develop with age, they are not satisfied with the simple right or wrong judgments.(4) There are 76 more Engagement resources in college English class than that in middle English class, and the proportion of Engagement resource in college English class is 5.3% higher than that in middle English class. College students have a higher cognitive ability, teachers should be focused on a deeper communication and the process of knowledge construction, and open up the dialogic space for alternative positions.(5) There are 10 more Graduation resources in college English class than that in middle English class while the proportion of Graduation resource in middle English class is 3.2% higher than that in college English class. It indicates that college students have a better independent learning ability, so they are not satisfied with teachers' simple praise.They are focused on their knowledge construction and class performance, while middle school students need more encouragement to participate in class activities.Based on the results, this study achieves some teaching enlightenment: while teaching,English teachers should consciously apply the appraisal resources to teacher talk,appropriately evaluate the students and positively guide them. The appropriate use of teacher talk can achieve positive teaching effect. What's more, the use of Appraisal theory can help teachers to improve their evaluative strategies and promote their career growth.The present study is of pedagogical significance as a guiding reference for teacher talk.