Teaching Strategies For Creating Learning Opportunities

This dissertation aims to explore the teaching strategies that Chinese middle school English teachers tend to use to increase opportunities for learning,learner involvement or scaffolding in classes and how these strategies are implemented by observing five video-recordings of five English classes in a teaching competition.Theoretically,the current study is mainly informed by the sociocultural perspective in SLA research,which advocates that social interaction is a learning itself.The effect of social interaction in mediating and supporting the practices of learning in the development of second language pedagogy is highlighted and the idea that it is necessary to create spaces or learning opportunities in classroom is largely accepted in the field of second language learning.Thus,the current study is conducted particularly based on Steve Walsh's research in the constructive and obstructive teacher-student interactions and how they create space for learning or hinder students' participation by applying conversation analysis as methodology together with both qualitative and quantitative methods.The current study finds out that there are different teaching strategies employed in the demonstration classes,including various ways of activating students' schemata,direct error correction,giving students extended wait-time and scaffolding,which also confirm the claims of the previous researchers in this field.It also finds out that some strategies,like content feedback,are not available in the data.Some of the obstructive interaction patterns like teacher echo and completing students' turns are also certified with extracts from the transcripts of the five lessons.Chinese teachers' contingencies for creating learning opportunities comprising activating students' schemata,nomination,and gestures and facial expressions are also presented in the current paper.It also emphasizes the implication and influence of teaching strategies on creating learning opportunities.