A Research On Teacher Feedback In English Classroom Interaction:a Case Study In A Junior High School

Classroom interaction is a dynamic and cooperative process carried out between teachers and students or among students themselves during the class time.The quality of classroom interaction can be influenced by a lot of factors,such as the interaction pattern,questions raised by teachers,teacher feedback etc.And this study mainly talks about teacher feedback in English classroom interaction.Many scholars and experts at home and abroad have made a comprehensive study in this field,but mostly in universities,and rarely linked to the actual classroom interaction in junior high school.However,with the development of English curriculum reform,classroom interaction and teacher feedback has gained more attention.The research questions are about the main types and proportions of different types of teacher feedback,students' and teachers' attitudes and preferences towards teacher feedback,and also the effects of teacher feedback on students' performance during classroom interaction.In this research,the author adopts natural observation,questionnaire and interview as research methods.And the theoretical bases are Krashen's Comprehensible Input and Affective Filter Hypothesis,Swain's Comprehensible Output Hypothesis,Long's Interaction Theory and the Scaffolding Theory.This study carries out in a junior high school in Hangzhou.Firstly,the author selected 4 teachers and their students from grade 8,took a three-month detailed observation,and recorded four lessons and translated them into written words.Secondly,the author invited these 120 students participated in the questionnaire survey.At last,the author conducted an interview with 4 English teachers.Then the author did the data collection and analysis,tried to find out the problems and provide some useful suggestions to improve classroom interaction.The major findings are: 1.The proportion of teacher feedback is 47.78%.Even the proportion of teacher feedback is large,it is not always effective feedback.From the observation of these classes,we can know that positive feedback and neutral feedback are mainly used.And among neutral feedback,explicit correction and comments are more often used.2.Teachers' and students' attitudes and preferences towards teacher feedback are not totally the same.When students' answers are correct,teachers usually give praises and then make a comment.But if the students' answers are incorrect,teachers would tell them the right answer directly in order to save time,however the students hope that teachers could give them time and chance to correct by themselves.3.Positive feedback and neutral feedback can make a difference on students' performance from several aspects: improvement of students' motivation,enhancement of students' self-confidence,and improvement of talk-turn.Meanwhile,negative feedback has a close relationship with the effectiveness of students' answers.Here are some suggestions: first,teachers should balance the class time and give them chance to talk,which will make the classroom interaction more effective.Second,teachers can provide appropriate elicitation for students,and use multiple strategies.Third,teachers should reflect more about the classroom interaction quality.Finally,the author points out some limitations in this study,such as the limited time etc.