An Analytic Study Of High School English Teacher Talk From The Educational Ecology Perspective

Teacher talk is the medium for classroom teaching as well as the main resource of target language input for students.It is also the factor of the language environment for students' language learning.Teacher talk is therefore of paramount importance.The analysis of teacher talk has always gained much concern among linguists and educators since the 1970 s.In China,many exploratory studies on teacher talk have been carried out,converging particularly on university classroom.Little focus is rested on high school English classroom especially on senior high school.Research into teacher talk in the English classroom from the perspective of educational ecology is even fewer.In recent years,researches have been conducted from an ecological point of view in various areas(Huang,2016).Scholars in the educational field observe and study the teaching and learning ecologically with a view to constructing ecological classroom so as to get the classroom teaching to flow along a sustainable path.From the perspective of educational ecology,ecological English classroom attaches significant importance to honing students' competencies for sustainable development and thus life-long study,which is in line with the goal of cultivating students' core competencies in English as a foreign language.The English teachers are key to achieving this goal.It is both an opportunity and a challenge for them to construct the ecological English classroom.They are supposed to renew their teaching ideas,reform the teaching mode and optimize the language used in class in order to get students to develop sustainably.Grounded on such background,this study firstly analyzed the features of teacher talk in the English classroom in senior high school from the perspective of educational ecology,going onto the exploration of the limiting factors of teacher talk in the present research.Then the author investigated students' expectation of teacher talk in the English classroom in order to get some beneficial implications for the teachers and the teacher educators.Based on the law of limiting factor,the law of tolerance,the law of niche,the flowerpot effect and the idea of ecological classroom,this analytic study was carried out in an ordinary public senior high school in Hekou District,Dongying City with three research instruments including the classroom observation and audio-recording,the questionnaire as well as the interview.A total of five English teachers of grade two and their 256 students were involved in the research.Through the analysis and discussions of the collected data,the author drew the following conclusion: 1.There are both ecological features and non-ecological features of teacher talk in the present research.1)Ecological features of teacher talk include the appropriate wait-time after teacher question and the attempt of diverse evaluation by individual teacher.2)Non-ecological teacher talk consists of the following aspects: first of all,the teacher-student interaction pattern is completely teacher initiated and dominated;second,the questions employed by the teachers to initiate discussion tend to be display questions that usually elicit pre-established knowledge in the textbook rather than the exploratory questions which stimulate thinking.In addition,the teachers are inclined to seek the answers by nominating certain students or encouraging answers in chorus rather than volunteering.Third,teacher follow-up moves are not diversified and heuristic at all.Forth,the amount of teacher talk exceeds students' zone of optimum for language input,which leads to the misposition of the niches in classroom ecosystem.Finally,teacher talk is not exemplary enough and lacks explanatory power.2.The major limiting factors of teacher talk in this study are students' English proficiency,school leaders' educational idea,limited class time,teacher's cognition toward ecological classroom and so on.3.The senior high school students in this study prefer the free and open classroom atmosphere.They like humorous teacher talk and expect more open questions,more specific positive evaluations and less teacher talk time.They hope that the teachers encourage volunteer answers and switch their language in class according to students' needs.Some implications for teaching were proposed on the basis of the analysis and discussions of the results.The teachers are supposed to continuously refine their teaching ideas as well as professional knowledge and skills so as to improve their talk in the classroom.Meanwhile,the teacher training programs are expected to attach more importance to the modification of teacher talk.Besides,ecological ways of assessment should be designed,focusing not only on the mastery of specific knowledge per se,but also on the cultivation and development of student competencies like competencies for learning and thinking during the process of teaching and learning.