English Classroom Discourse Analysis In A Junior High School Based On Exchange Structure Analysis

On the basis of the exchange structure analysis,this research aims to examine the exchange types in teacher-student interaction and teachers' elicitation in class for the achievement of pedagogical goals.The data of the analysis was collected from the while-reading lessons of Grade Seven in a junior high school in Shenzhen.Two English teachers and their students were chosen for the classroom recording,transcribing and analyzing.The findings of the exchange structure within two classes indicate that there are fifteen exchange types in T1's class,and thirteen exchange types in T2's class.Similarly,most of the types in two classes are in consistent with the potential information structure proposed by Martin and Rose(2003,2007,2014),but two types in T1's class and three exchange types in T2's class don't follow the the sequence of the potential information structure.The realistic exchanges include detailed tracking moves and linguistic services.The dominant exchange type both in two classes is dK1^ K2^ K1.Compared with the two classes,T2 and her students used the dominant exchange type more frequently.Besides,the K1 move is not always the minimally indispensable move in an exchange in two classes because the K1 move sometimes is simplified by “yes”,“hum” or even omitted by nonverbal expressions.Differently,linguistic services can often be seen in T1's class;while in T2's class,linguistic services seldom appeared.T2 adopted more referential questions in K2 moves within the reading lesson.Generally,exchange types were a bit more diverse in T1's class and the exchanges were more interactive in T2's class because students had more opportunities to air their own opinions freely in class.In addition,the teacher-student relationship was more harmonious between T2 and her students because the exchange was negotiable in the homework assignment section of T2's class,while T1 had more authority because she assigned the homework only in a K1 move.In terms of investigating the teachers' eliciting types to scaffold students when studentsneeded help,it shows that both two teachers' elicitation is divided into two types.As for the first type,three elicitation ending with teacher's answer are identified in T1's class,and three elicitation ending with teacher's utterance are found in T2's class.With regard to the second type,four elicitation ending with student's answer are found in T1's class,and three elicitation ending with student's answer are identified in T2's class.In general,T1's elicitation focused more on the linguistic forms because of the grammar-translation teaching method,so scaffolding mainly appeared when T1 examined the linguistic forms of the words or expressions.While T2's elicitation concentrated more on comprehension of main idea of two passages,and less on linguistic forms.Therefore,the assistance of the teacher was more needed by T1's students because T1 placed stress on the new words and expressions.When the students needed help in learning,both two teachers used common scaffolding ways,such as translation,move shifting,prompt,repetition.The difference was that seeking clarification,paraphrase were only adopted by T1,while form-focus feedback,command were only employed by T2.According to the distribution of elicitation of two teachers,both teachers mainly adopted(display question+ answer)ended with teacher's answer to scaffold students.