A Comparative Study Of Teacher Talk Between Novice And Expert Teachers In English Classroom Of Senior High School

During the process of English teaching,English classroom is the main place where most of the senior high school students have access to English.English teachers are the main subjects to implement the teaching plan.The quality and quantity of teacher talk is of crucial importance to the students' second language acquisition(SLA),so teacher talk has always been one of the focuses of scholars and researchers.Teacher talk is the speech that the teacher uses in the classroom and a bond of teacher-students interaction.Teacher talk is not only a way to impart the language knowledge but to organize teaching and manage the students.Teachers' classroom discourse is vital both to the teachers' professional development and to the students' academic achievements.What's more,the classroom discourse of novice and expert teachers are different.Since teacher talk plays such an important role in classroom language teaching,many scholars have made a lot of empirical researches on it.However,many SLA scholars have made some researches about teacher talk between expert and novice teachers in college,but few of them have done such research about teacher talk in senior high schools.Therefore,it is worth doing a research about teacher talk between the two groups of teachers in senior high schools.Under the framework of discourse analysis theory and on the basis of Krashen's Comprehensible Input Hypothesis,Swain's Comprehensible Output Hypothesis,Long's Interactional Hypothesis and Vygostsky's Social Interactional Theories,the thesis aims to investigate differences of teacher talk between novice teachers and expert teachers in the senior high school English classroom.The research adopts the way of case study and four English teachers are chosen as subjects from one senior high school in Lanzhou.Then the author collected the data on the basis of the classroom observations and the transcripts from four audio-recorded lessons.The features of teacher talk are analyzed from the aspects of the amount of teacher talk,teacher's questions,teacher's feedback and features of interactional modification.The following results are drawn from the present study:1.As to the quantity of teacher talk,both novice teachers and expert teachers' talking time are more than that of the students' talking time,but expert teachers' talking time is less than that of the novice teachers'.However,the teachers native language talk(TNLT)of expert teachers is more than that of the novice teachers'.2.As to the questioning manners,both expert teachers and novice teachers raise many display questions.However,in comparison with expert teachers,the novice teachers raise more display questions.And expert teacher raise more referential questions,which can encourage the students to express themselves and in return promote their target language output.3.As to the feedback manners,both expert teachers and novice teachers are inclined to give positive feedback.While the novice teachers tend to employ a simple and short praise.The expert teachers tend to give positive feedback with a follow-up comment.With regard to the negative feedback,both novice the novice teachers and the expert teachers tend to use Manner 3(remind the student of the error by repetition and induce self-repair)the most.However,the novice teachers tend to use Manner 1(directly point out the students' mistakes)and Manner 2(ask another student to answer)more than those of the expert teachers.What's more,the expert teachers tend to adopt Manner 4(give a hint to the student and expect the student to complete the rest)as a way of giving feedback,which can stimulate more output from the student.4.As to the interactional modification manners,both novice teachers and expert teachers tend to employ comprehension checks.However,the novice teachers employ more comprehension checks.In comparison with the expert teachers,the novice teachers use more confirmation checks while the expert teacher use more clarification request,which is beneficial for students' language output.Despite its implications and suggestions to the further studies in the relevant field,the study has its limitations as well.For example,the sample size is too small that the result may not be very persuasive and reliable.There is no video materials,which can not reflect the non-verbal communications in the classroom.To some extent,the thesis is meant to help English teachers get to know the current situation of teacher talk in senior high school.No matter whether they are experienced or novice,they all need to learn from others' merits and overcome their own shortcomings.Therefore,the findings of the study may have implications on both language teaching and teachers' professional development.