A Study Of The Effects Of Teacher Language Awareness On English Teaching In Junior High Schools

In the teaching process,teacher language awareness(TLA)has been filtering learners' language input from three aspects of teaching materials,language input of partners and teacher talk in order to optimize their language input.Teacher talk in classroom can reflect a teacher's basic qualities to some extent.A teacher's language knowledge and the use of language knowledge can be reflected by his or her teacher talk.This study focuses on teacher talk to investigate the current level of language awareness of junior high school English teachers,to explore the factors that influence TLA and to explore the relationships among TLA,teacher talk and teaching effective-ness.This study chooses 3 English teachers in a junior high school in Shanghai as the research objects.The primary research instruments including classroom live observa-tion,interviews,field notes and questionnaires are applied.According to the results and analysis,this study finds that the junior high school English teachers have certain consciousness about the choice of language in class and the amount of target language input.However,teachers spend a lot of time explaining contents of books.The amount of teacher talk still largely exceeds the amount of student talk and time for students' activities is not enough in class.At the same time,teachers do not pay enough attention to students' specific learning difficulties and interests in learning English.Besides,teachers lack culture awareness as well.Comparing the results of language awareness of three teachers indicates that young teachers tend to have a higher degree of TLA than elder ones.In addition,the data analysis shows that there is no absolute causal relationship between TLA and students' learning outcomes.However,a teacher having a higher degree of TLA does have a positive impact on the quality of teacher talk,which in turn enhances students' learning effectiveness in the classroom.As indicated by the research results,TLA is not static.It can be improved by teachers' more attention and career training.This study puts forward some sugges-tions on teaching and education,both theoretically and practically.In teaching,this article encourages teachers to find a balance between the target language and their mother tongue,to learn more about their students,to pay more attention to students'intercultural communicative competence,to effectively design classroom activities and to reflect on their own classrooms,in order to continuously improve their teach-ing effectiveness.In teacher education,this article hopes that normal education,pre-service and in-service teacher training can all incorporate TLA into training systems.In addition,the relevant departments should strictly control the recruitment and certi-fication of foreign teachers.