Lexical Features Of Teacher Talk In College English Class

Teacher talk is the language used by teachers to organize and carry out teaching tasks in class.English teacher talk is not only a tool for English teachers to implement teaching plans,but also an important source of language input for students.Since Ferguson proposed teacher talk in 1964,scholars abroad have conducted a series of researches on it.Foreign scholars mainly focused on the characteristics of teacher talk,structure of teacher talk,teacher classroom questioning,teacher-student interaction adjustment,comparative study of different teacher talk,the relationship between teacher talk and learning opportunity,interconnections between teacher talk and pedagogical purposes etc.Studies by foreign researchers have proved that teacher talk is the main source of students' language input,and the quality and quantity of teacher talk influence student' learning effect.At the same time,it has been accepted that teacher talk should create a large number of opportunities for learners to use the target language so as to promote the output of the target language.In our country,English teachers are the main organizers of English classroom learning,and their talk is also the main sources for learners to obtain target language input.Therefore,in the absence of target language input in the foreign language learning environment,the quality and quantity of English teacher talk are of great importance for the learners' language acquisition.Therefore,domestic scholars have also studied teacher talk.They analyzed the language features of teacher talk from the perspectives of discourse,syntax and pronunciation,and explored classroom teacher's discourse markers,classroom teacher feedback,teacher evaluation,teacher questioning,classroom discourse adjustment,complexity of teacher talk etc.However,the studies on the lexical features of teacher talk are relatively scarce,and the“quality” and “quantity” of teacher talk needs to be further studied as well.In view of this,seven non-English major college English teachers of different teaching experience from Lanzhou Jiaotong University were selected as the research subjects,aiming at exploring the lexical features of teacher talk and further investigating the “quality” and“quantity” of teacher talk for Chinese students' target language learning.Accordingly,this study discusses the following three questions in detail:(1)Is the teacher talk of college English teachers with different teaching seniority comprehensible?(2)Can college English teachers of different teaching ages provide a rich lexical environment for Chinese college English students?(3)Is college English teacher talk characterized by L1 use? If yes,how is Chinese used by college English teachers of different teaching ages in class?Relevant data were collected through classroom recording in the class of collegeEnglish and interviews with teachers and students.Then the data were transcribed and collated.With the help of Vocab-profiler,a corpus linguistics tool,the collected data were analyzed and major findings were made as follows:(1)The teacher talk in college English class is comprehensible.The average proportion of vocabulary used by the seven teachers in VP1-VP3 was 95.55%.Although the comprehensibility of teacher talk with short and long teaching ages is different,it does not reach a significant value.(2)The teacher talk in college English class did not provide students with a rich lexical environment,and was characterized by “oversimplification”.TTR,which reflects the complexity of vocabulary,had an average value of 0.175 in the present study.Lexical frequency distribution was concentrated on the top 2,000 words commonly used in BNC corpus,and the average lexical density was only 0.53.These data showed that college English teacher talk in class was not rich in terms of vocabulary,which is not conducive to students' English learning and the improvement of language proficiency.In addition,there were still differences in the lexical richness of teacher talk with different teaching ages.Some teachers with short teaching ages and long teaching ages had significant differences in lexical richness,and some teacher talk had too many “repetitions”.(3)The teacher talk in college English class is characterized by the use of Chinese.Teachers with long teaching experience and short teaching experience used a high proportion of Chinese.The total amount of English use in the seven teachers' talk was different,and the teacher talk with long and short teaching experience accounted for less proportion of the total amount of English input.Based on these findings,some implications can be drawn for the college English teaching.(1)College English teachers should pay attention to cultivating their awareness of the quality of input,especially the awareness of lexical richness.(2)College English teachers should control the proportion of Chinese use in their talk.College English teachers are expected to increase the amount of English input in teacher talk and use more English as a medium to express ideas and teach the target language.(3)Teachers should improve the quality of their talk.On the one hand,college English teachers can refer to BNC corpus vocabulary to demonstrate the use of the target language to students.On the basis of the comprehensibility of teacher talk,college English teachers should make appropriate discourse adjustments according to students' level and classroom performance to achieve the best teacher talk.(4)The vocational training of college English teachers should be continued.With special attention to the language ability and knowledge expertise,college English teachers should increase the training content of “teacher talk” and improve the “quality” and“quantity” of English classroom input,thus ultimately improving the teaching effectiveness ofcollege English teachers.