Exploring The Features Of Student Teachers' Directives In EFL Classrooms: A Case Study

With deep development of Elementary Education Curriculum Reform,teacher role is advocated to change from authority to peer learning.Then teacher talk which teachers used to interact with their students in class becomes a particularly important topic.Therefore,many scholars have begun to study the features of teacher talk in class,especially teachers,directives.This thesis aims to explore the features of student teachers,directives in English as a Foreign Language(hereafter referred as EFL)classrooms.Specifically,this paper attempts to find answers to:1)the sentence structures and function types of student teachers' directives based on all video-tapes transcriptions;2)the salient features of student teachers' directives;3)the key factors affecting the formation of these salient features.The present study is conducted among twelve student teachers,whose major is English education at a provincial normal university in Zhejiang.And they have a period of about two-month educational practice in junior or senior high schools in Cixi before graduation.Classroom observation and stimulus recall are two kinds of research instruments adopted in this study.The data collected from their educational practice period includes twelve video-tapes transcriptions of classroom observations and six audio-tapes transcriptions of stimulus recalls.Based on the theoretical foundations informed by Speech Act Theory,Krashen's Comprehensible Input Hypothesis,Feuerstein's mediation,Leech's politeness principles and previous analytical frameworks on teachers' directives,this study attempts to investigate the features of twelve student teachers5 directivs in EFL classrooms.In the first place,it is argued that the percentage of direct directives(78%)is higher than that of indirect directives(22%).The sentence structures of direct directives include "(You)+ verb phrase +(please)"(22%),"Let's + verb phrase"(10%)and "abbreviated directive"(46%);whereas those of indirect directives contain"Can/Could/Will/Would you + verb phrase?"(11%),"declarative"(9%)and"declarative + tag question?"(2%).Besides,this study indicates that the percentage of"pure direction"(86%)is much higher than that of the other three function types,"direction + explanation"(4%),"direction + repetition"(7%)and "direction +check-up"(3%).Moreover,four salient features of student teachers,directives are identified:1)Inaccurate wording;2)Redundant speech;3)Obscure diction;and 4)Unclear expressions.Finally,three key factors affecting the formation of these salient features are 1)unfamiliarity with the students and teaching materials;2)insufficient lesson preparation beforehand;and 3)inadequate pedagogical content knowledge.The current study,on the one hand,evokes in-service teachers and student teachers to give accurate,brief,clear,and comprehensible directives,which improves their teaching efficiency of EFL classrooms and helps their students to learn English in a genuine language communication context.On the other hand,it also provides university teachers with suggestions for attaching great importance to pedagogical guidance about how to give effective directives.