A Study On English Teachers' Feedback In Senior High School

Teachers' feedback,which is a significant link between teachers and students in classroom interaction,plays an essential role in English learning in the classroom.Effective teachers' feedback can not only provide students with a large amount of comprehensible language input,stimulate their interest in English learning,but also promote students' language output and improve their comprehensive language abilities.However,many studies have shown that,in general,teachers' feedback in English classes in Chinese middle schools has not played its due role.Therefore,this paper conducts empirical research on English teachers' feedback in senior high school classrooms with a view to exploring an effective way to improve the efficiency of teachers' feedback.In this study,7 English teachers and 224 students in Senior Grade 1 from Yueyang No.15 Middle School were selected as the subjects.The materials and data were collected by way of classroom observation and questionnaires.The thesis aims to explore the following three questions: How is the general usage of teachers' feedback in Senior Grade 1 classrooms? What are the differences between the use of feedback by novice English teachers and experienced English teachers? What are the teachers' and students' attitudes towards and preferences for teachers' feedback?The result shows that:(1)The average use of teachers' feedback is about 41.9 times for each class,which covers about 36.7% of the teachers' talk;the average use of positive feedback is 67.9%,much higher than that of the negative feedback,which is 32.1%;(2)On average,in the four classes,the novice English teachers offered the teachers' feedback for 117.0 times,while the experienced English teachers used for 218.0 times,far more than that of the novice teachers;(3)The involved teachers and students generally agreed that teachers' feedback has great value in English classroom.When students answer correctly,most teachers prefer to adopt the positive feedback: simple praise and comment or simple praise and elaboration,which are in consistence with students' preferences for teachers' feedback.However,in real classroom teaching,simple praise is of the most frequent use in positive feedback.When students answer wrongly or cannot give the answer temporarily,both teachers and students prefer the negative feedback: elicitation,but a small number of students hope that the teachers would give the correct answer directly.In this study,the following enlightenments are shed for English teachers to improve the effectiveness of feedback.Firstly,teachers should reflect on the use of teachers' feedback in classroom,and summarize effective strategies and skills of teachers' feedback.Secondly,teachers should use various types of teachers' feedback flexibly so as to respect the students' individual differences.Finally,teachers should take full consideration of the students' psychological and emotional needs,maximizing the function of the teachers' feedback.