A Study Of Teacher-student Interaction In Junior High School English Classrooms

Classroom teacher-student interaction refers to the communication in various forms between teachers and students in the classroom in order to fulfill the learning objectives.Successful teacher-student interaction can help to balance knowledge input and ability cultivation in classroom teaching,and improve teaching effect consequently.Teacher-student interaction has been one of the hot issues in the educational field abroad and in China,and fruitful research results have been gained.However,in China,studies on the status quo of teacher-student interaction in English classrooms in junior high schools are comparatively inadequate.Therefore,it is hoped that this study will help English teachers to have a more comprehensive understanding of the current teacher-student interaction in English classrooms in junior middle schools and provide English teachers with some references to solve the existing problems.This study was conducted in a middle school.The participants for questionnaires are 200 students and 30 teachers;the participants for interview are 20 students and 4 teachers;and the author observed 8 English lessons(2 lessons from each)from 4 English teachers(1 teacher from each grade)of a junior high school.By integratedly using questionnaire,interview and classroom observations,the author answered the following two research questions: 1.What are the attitudes of teachers and students towards teacher-student interaction in junior high school English classrooms? 2.What is the general situation of teacher-student interaction in junior high school English classrooms in terms of functions,types and forms? Based on the analysis,the major findings are as followed:In general,most teachers and students are positive towards teacher-student interaction in junior high school English classrooms,but few of them have negative attitudes towards it.Most of them are aware of the importance of teacher-student interaction in junior high school English classrooms.Besides,most students are enthusiastic and active in class.Meanwhile,most teachers can often organize interactive activities in junior high school English classrooms.In terms of functions,cognitive interaction is quite common(68%),whereas emotional interaction is less frequently used(32%).Most teachers care more about the cognitive interaction rather than emotional interaction,and most of the interaction is not related to students' daily life or their own experience.Besides,teachers regard knowledge delivering as a major task in English teaching.In terms of types,the frequency from high to low is: questioning(71%),competitions(15%),games(10%),appreciation(4%).Most teachers use questioning to interact in class and they seldom organize competitions,games or appreciation.In terms of forms,the frequency from high to low is: teacher-student(55%),teacher-the class(12%),teacher-group(4%),student-teacher(3%).The main types of teacher-student interaction are teacher-student(T-S),while the other three types,namely,teacher-the class(T-Ss),student-teacher(S-T)and teacher-groups(T-G)are much less.At last,the author tries to give some suggestions to tackle the problems including: designing effective questions and creating interactive situation;paying attention to emotional interaction;enriching the interactive forms;developing various types of interaction.