A Study On Teacher-student Turn-taking In The Senior High School English Classroom

With the development of foreign language teaching and learning,highlighting student-centered education and strengthening teacher-student interaction become the major issues of classroom teaching practice and research globally.And classroom turn-taking mechanism goes across the oral interaction between the teacher and students,providing us with a brand-new perspective to analyze teacher-student interaction.Hence,it received a substantial amount of scholarly attention at home and abroad.Through reviewing the relevant literature,the author discovered that previous scholars had conducted fruitful researches on the classroom turn-taking.However,there are few empirical studies established in the setting of senior high school English classroom.Against this background,the author placed the research lens on the teacher-student turn-taking in the senior high school English classroom,elaborated on the status quo of teacher-student turn-taking from three aspects,i.e.,teacher-student turns,teachers' turn-allocation techniques,and teacher-student turn-taking patterns,and analyzed the reasons attributing to the problems arising from teacher-student turn-takings.It is hoped that this research can provide English teachers in senior high school with practical advice on optimizing teacher-student interaction,activating students' classroom involvement,and promoting foreign language teaching and learning.Therefore,the four research questions addressed in the research are:(1)What are the properties of teacher-student turns in senior high school English classroom?(2)How is the usage of teachers' turn-allocation techniques in senior high school English classroom?(3)What are the characteristics presented in teacher-student turn-taking patterns in senior high school English classroom?(4)What are the reasons respectively attributing to the status quo of teacher-student turn-taking in senior high school English classroom?To solve the research questions above,the author randomly sampled 4 English teachers from the Middle School Attached to Wuhan University,observed their lesson,transcribed the classroom data through tape-recording,and interviewed them.Through qualitative analysis of the data,this study has achieved the following results:(1)The comparison of teacher's turn and students' turn in quantitative distribution,length,and construction were severely imbalanced.Students' turns were small in number,short in length,and simple in construction,creating a sharp contrast to teacher's turns;(2)Teachers' usage of turn-allocation techniques was ineffective.Teachers'excessive employment of the technique of invitations to reply impeded students' deep exploration of the problems and discouraged their active classroom involvement.Besides,students' classroom participation was low and uneven under the utilization of teachers' turn-allocation techniques;(3)Teacher-student turn-takings proceeded principally in the IRF interaction pattern,which caused teacher-student interaction to perform on the surface-level.However,the turn-taking patterns conducive to in-depth teacher-student interaction were at a low frequency in the classroom;(4)The reasons respectively contributing to the problems above are:driven by teacher-centered philosophy,teachers had a strong dominance of the classroom turns.Besides,teachers' frequent use of closed-ended questions cannot offer students adequate speaking opportunities in the real sense;Teachers,unconscious use of turn-allocation techniques created great trouble for them to maximize the efficiency of turn-allocation techniques to get more students engaged in the classroom discourse;In the teacher-centered classroom,teachers put the class under strict control,accustomed themselves to proposing closed-ended questions and supplying simple feedback,and had a faint awareness of encouraging students to speak and practice more.Based on the results above,the author put forward the following suggestions for English teachers in the senior high school to improve foreign language teaching:first of all,teachers should transform their role orientation,foster student-centered awareness,and increase the proportion of open-ended questions so as to provide students with more speaking opportunities in the real sense;Secondly,teachers are supposed to optimize the efficiency of each turn-allocation technique,avoid relying too much on a single technique,and tailor the most appropriate technique to the most appropriate situation so as to encourage more students to be engaged in the classroom;Finally,teachers ought to extend teacher-student turn-taking patterns and adopt the patterns more conducive to deep teacher-student interaction so as to extend teacher-student dialogues and develop students' higher-level thinking.