An Investigation On Student Talk In English Classroom Of Senior High School

Classroom discourse(CD)is the foundation of English teaching.CD research has been one of the most significant fields in education research.Overseas and domestic studies involve such aspects as the definition,modes of CD,the analysis methodology and teacher talk,etc.Student talk is an important part of CD.Student's output can not only reflect the real situation of classroom teaching,but also the level of student's communicative competence,meanwhile,it can reflect the problems in students' communication process.Thus,the study on student talk is of great importance and deserves much attention.In this study,with the aim of obtaining the status quo of student talk in English classroom of senior high school,the following question will be investigated:(1)What is participation of students in terms of the quantity of student talk and student's turn-taking?(2)What is the quality of student talk in terms of vocabulary and sentence structures? and(3)What are the problems in student talk? Why? Therefore,the researcher chooses high school students as the subjects,and student's output in reading lessons as the data.Through classroom observation and interview,based on Output Hypothesis and Interaction Hypothesis to analyze the data,the main findings of this study are as follows:(1)During the interaction,the mean of student talk is 16.9 minutes,the mean percentage is 37.5% and the mean of student's turn-taking is 19 times;most students actively participate in the interaction while a small group fail to participate;(2)The mean sentence length of student talk is 4.07,and the vocabulary are limited to certain words and lack of discourse markers.The common sentence structures are: simple,compound and complex sentences,with simple sentences mostly used;and(3)There are two kinds of problems in student talk: in terms of language,the sentences are lack of variety with many misuses of tense;in terms of content,the words are lack of self understanding and critical spirit.Language problems are related to teacher's models and feedbacks to students;content problems are influenced by teacher's guidance and students' ability level.The implications of this study are as follows:(1)Students should be aware of the improvement of their output,with larger vocabulary,varied sentence structures and active participation,besides they should be courageous enough to express themselves;and(2)Teachers should create such interesting activities as group discussion and role play for students to speak more,give students enough thinking time and specify when to correct,besides teachers should focus on content meaning of student talk other than grammar mistakes.