An Analysis Of Attitude Resources In Excellent Teacher Talk In English Classroom Of Senior High School

In terms of the teacher talk,wide attentions and interests have been aroused from different disciplines.However,a few studies lay emphasis on attitudinal resources and their influence upon the interpersonal relationship,especially the interactions as well as their teaching effect.Given this,the thesis is attempted to apply the Appraisal Theory to analyzing the attitudinal resources in the senior high school EFL classroom teacher talk.This thesis bases the analysis on the Appraisal Theory,which is put forward by J.R.Martin.There are three systems in the Appraisal Theory: Attitude,Engagement and Graduation.One of the major systems of the Appraisal System is the Attitude System which is further divided into three subsystems: Affect,Judgment and Appreciation.In this thesis,the attitudinal resources are chosen as the subject matter under discussion.The talk of ten teachers is collected who are regarded as excellent teachers to attend “The Ninth National Senior High School English Classroom Teaching Demonstration”.This thesis is attempted to correctly identify the percentage of appraisal resources in the teacher talk,analyze how these resources affect the efficiency of class teaching,and reveal how the teachers inspire students successfully to construct a harmonious relationship between teachers and students.The author adopts qualitative and quantitative analytical techniques into this thesis.Firstly,the author selects the attitude resources in the teacher talk;secondly,the author calculates the frequency of each resource,and then analyzes some expressions to present how the teachers arrange classes and how they stimulate the students' interest in the classes.Meanwhile,the author presents some conclusions in this thesis:(1)The teacher talk is rich in Attitude resources in the EFL classroom,but the frequencies of Attitude resources are different.Appreciation ranks the highest amount,followed by Judgment while Affect occupies the lowest proportion;(2)The teachers use Affect resources to express their own opinions and feelings;the teachersuse Judgment resources to evaluate the students' abilities and characteristics;the teachers use Appreciation resources to evaluate the students' performances as well as the teaching contents.(3)The teachers are all use attitudinal resources flexibly and tactfully.Concerning the subsystems of Affect,Judgment and Appreciation,Un/happiness resources take up the highest frequency of Affect resources;Capacity resources occupy the first place of Judgment resources and Reaction resources are the highest parts of Appreciation resources.(4)Compared with negative attitudinal resources,positive attitudinal resources are overwhelming.Most teachers utilize positive resources to praise the students in an explicit way.All of conclusions signify the interpersonal meaning and emotional influence of senior high school teachers' talk and illustrates senior high school teachers who attach importance to the students.From the analysis,it is found that the harmonious atmosphere in class results from effective and appropriate teacher talk.This study may enrich the application of the Appraisal theory in the teacher talk.It is hoped that this study will be of pedagogical significance as a valuable guidance for the teacher talk.The limitations of this thesis are that,firstly,because of the space constraint,only ten excellent teachers' talk are selected and analyzed,so,it is not widely representative.Secondly,lessons for demonstration differ from real classroom,which makes the analysis not comprehensive enough.At last,because the theory itself is incomplete,some Appraisal resources might be inevitably overlooked.However,this thesis aims to test the feasibility of applying Appraisal Theory to the study of teachers' talk and will be of some use for future researches in this area.