A Case Study On Teacher Talk In Rural Middle School English Classes

Teacher talk is an important language source for English learners,and teachers' discourse to some degree can reflect their teaching skill level.The quantity and quality of teacher talk directly affect students' language learning.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the current situation and the existing problems with teacher talk in English acquisition.More and more researchers put attention to the study of teacher talk in academic circles of English teaching at home and abroad,Through the survey and analysis of Teacher Talk in English class in Zhejiang University,Zhou & Zhou(2002)found that “student-centered”teaching model are more helpful to students' second language acquisition,as it creates more opportunity for students to make interaction.Hu Yuan(2014)analyzed the quality and quantity,questioning,interaction adjustment and the feedback in senior high school,and the main finding is that teachers no longer master the class,at the same time,teachers can arouse students' interest and promote students' output by using the teacher talk properly.while in China the studies on teacher talk was mainly focusing on the English teachers of university and high school,far less on one in middle and primary schools,and the situation has gotten more noticeable after the promulgation of the New English Curriculum Standard.There was little research about the teacher talk in rural middle school.The quality standard of English teaching has always been a weak part of the fundamental education in rural areas.Although in recent years,the quality of education and teachers' degree level in rural areas have made remarkable progress,the reformation of English education in rural areas is still far less than enough.In this study,We adopt the classroom observation,questionnaires combined with the interview as the research instruments to analyze the four English teacher talk in English classroom teaching.And the study is conducted within the theoretical framework of Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis(1981),Swain's comprehensible output hypothesis(1985)and Long's interaction hypothesis(1985).The aims of this thesis is to conclude the features of teacher talk in rural middle school.Data analysis and discussion indicate the following findings: 1.Teacher talk take up about 20-30 minutes of the class time,and students are lackof the chance to practice oral English.Meanwhile,teachers use native language as medium instruction,when coping with barriers in comminication.2.When questioning,teachers use more display questions than referential questions,and the distribution of teachers' questioning couldn't concern about every student.3.Teachers always respond to students by using the following words,such as “Good”,“Ok” “Wonderful”.4.Teachers prefer to use the comprehension checks and confirmation checks in interaction adjustment.In view of the problems with teacher talk,the author expects to encourage teachers to pay more attention to the teacher talk.In addition,the author also proposed some suggestions accordingly for the improvement of teacher talk.For instance,the teacher should use the teacher talk base on students' cognitive level,and adopt a variety of positive feedback to enhance students' learning confidence,etc,which may facilitate the rural middle teachers to improve the English classroom teacher talk.