A Comparative Study Of Teacher Discourse Between Expert Teacher And Student Teacher In High School English Classrooms

The teacher discourse in class is one of the primary means and media to implement teaching and also reflects the process and methods of teaching. Therefore, the study of teacher discourse will help us to better understand the actual situation of English classes. With the deepening of the new curriculum reform, the roles and tasks of English teachers have already changed. They are no longer just delivers of knowledge, but also as conductors, organizers, coordinators and respondents. Accordingly, the English teacher classroom discourse should be adjusted.However, the large population and competitive pressure of our country forced many school teachers to return to traditional teaching mode. And at present, there are still a large number of English teachers using force-feeding methods of teaching, which means the educational reform needs a long way to go. Consequently, it is becoming an important issue to mobilize students' enthusiasm in learning, promote their second language acquisition and enhance their English language proficiency through teacher's rational use of classroom discourse. All in all, it's practical and worth researching teacher discourse in high schools.Up to date, many scholars have conducted a great deal of researches on classroom discourse. Some of them specifically explored the characteristics of questions types, feedbacks, explanations, repetition and command in teachers' discourse from the perspective of language teaching. The others tried to concretely examine the features in pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax and semantics from the angle of linguistics. Some scholars both at home and abroad have also done several comparative studies on expert teachers and novice teachers and have found significant differences, particularly in the areas of knowledge, efficiency, and insight. But few of them aim at the expert teachers who are winners of national English teaching competition and students teachers who haven't started their career from the perspective of discourse analysis.This article attempts to explore the characteristics of these two types of teachers' classroom talk through a comparative analysis between expert teachers and novice teachers, and to identify similarities and differences in their use of teacher talk and classroom interaction. Combined with students' and teachers' feedback, this article attempts to analyze similarities and differences of these two types of teachers' classroom discourse from the following four dimensions: authenticity, interactivity, logic and normative. The purpose of the study focuses on the actual effects of teacher talk. On the one hand, the writer tried her best to investigate whether the two types of teacher talk provided students with an authentic language input, or whether it helped students to construct knowledge and develop language skills. On the other hand, the writer also tried to explore whether it is conducive to the organization and conduct of students' learning activities.The writer collected three student teachers' teaching videos during a period of two months when she worked as a student teacher at High School Attached to Shandong Normal University. And then she found the other three expert teachers' open course videos on the Internet. The author used recording as the main research method and combined it with observing, noting and questionnaires to analyze the teacher talk between student teachers and expert teachers. The author found that there were significant differences between the two types of classroom discourse.(1) The expert teachers are better at setting real situations to promote teaching, while student teachers often ignore to use language spoken in real life.(2) The expert teachers are better at communicating with students through various interactive activities, while student teachers are more concerned about their own teaching procedure;(3) The expert teachers are better at organizing classroom discourse, which is more logical and coherent than student teachers;(4) The expert teachers' classroom discourse is more standardized and decent, with fewer errors when compared with student teachers. Expert teachers usually assign more attention to observe and guide their students in the teaching process and try to make better use of classroom discourse to help students construct knowledge or develop language skills; In contrast, the student teachers can not optimize students' learning process by using classroom discourse, but are concerned too much about their own teaching procedure.In addition, through comparative analysis of teacher talk between the expert teachers and student teachers, the author gets some implications for teachers to improve their classroom talk quality.(1) Teachers should pay attention to the quality and effectiveness of their classroom discourse, accumulating more experience by watching teaching competition videos from winner teachers, and develop the habit of analyzing their own classroom discourse;(2) Teachers should attach great importance to the authenticity of the discourse, creating more situations closer to the reality of life;(3) Teachers should encourage students to make more language output, designing more interaction activities between students as well as between teacher and student(4) Teachers should base their teaching on the syllabus, making their teaching design and classroom discourse more logical and more easy for students to understand;(5) Teachers should work harder after class to grasp more and more authentic English by using various learning resources.