A Comparative Study On The Modification Of Questions Between Expert Teachers And Novice Teachers In Junior Middle School English Class

Teacher talk has attracted researchers' much attention.In English class,teacher talk is not only used to organize teaching,but also an important source of students' language input.Researchers at home and abroad have found that modification in teacher talk can provide learners with comprehensible input in English teaching.Empirical and theoretical studies on modification in teacher talk have been conducted by researchers,finding two main types of modification in teacher talk: linguistic modification and interactive modification.Linguistic modification includes speech rate,pronunciation,pause,self-repetition,lexical modification,subordinate sentence and declarative sentence substitution for interrogative sentence.Interactive modification includes comprehension check,confirmation check,clarification requests.There are many studies on modification of teacher talk in foreign countries,but few in China,especially in primary and secondary schools.Based on the above situation,this study attempts to explore the modification of classroom questioning discourse of English teachers in junior middle school,and make a comparative analysis of expert teacher and novice teacher's questioning discourse modification,which can arouse their attention to the modification of their classroom questioning discourse and provide suggestions for the professional development of new teachers.In this study,one novice teacher and one expert teacher were selected as the research subjects.Their questioning discourse was analyzed from three aspects: the modification quantity of classroom questioning discourse,the linguistic modification and the interaction modification.This paper makes a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences between the two types of teachers' modification in classroom questioning discourse and their effects on students' English learning.Two questions will be answered:(1)What are the differences of the linguistic modification in teacher's questioning discourse between expert teachers and novice teachers?(2)What are the differences of the interactive modification in teacher's questioning discourse between expert teachers and novice teachers? Through classroom observation,transcription and after-class interviews,theclassroom questioning discourse between the two types of teachers: Both types of teachers use several modification methods simultaneously in linguistic modification,such as modification in speech rate,modification in pronunciation and self-repetition;The application of various modification forms are different according to different teachers.In the interactive modification,both the expert teacher and the novice teacher use confirmation check strategy more frequently,but the novice teacher uses this modification strategy fewer than the expert teacher.The novice teacher uses comprehensible check strategy more than expert teacher.After the modification of classroom questioning discourse,the effect of teacher-student interaction was enhanced,especially in the expert teacher's class.Based on the above findings,this study proposes the following suggestions for English teaching in primary and secondary schools:(1)Both expert teachers and novice teachers should pay attention to the modification of their questioning discourse;(2)Both novice teacher and expert teacher should pay attention to the effect of modification of questioning discourse.(3)Novice teachers should learn from expert teachers in the questioning discourse to improve the effectiveness of teacher-student interaction.