A Study Of Teacher Talk Repetition In High School English Classrooms

In the English classroom,teacher talk is an important source of students’ comprehensible input,and repetition,as a kind of teacher talk,also plays an important role in the process of students’ language acquisition.In the course of class,English teachers inevitably use repetition to increase students’ language input.At present,the phenomenon of repetition has not received much attention and research.Based on this,it is hoped that the study can arouse teachers’ attention to their own repetition,and also provide reference for novice teachers in their use of repetition strategies.In this study,4 high school English teachers and 171 high school students in Jinan XX High School are studied,and the teachers’ classroom talk obtained by recording is used as the research materials,and the following questions are studied by classroom observation,interview and questionnaire survey:1.What repetition patterns do teachers use in high school English classrooms?2.What are the pedagogical purposes of different repetition patterns of teacher talk?3.What is the effect of each teacher repetition pattern?By collecting and analyzing the classroom recording materials of 4 high school English teachers,the author summarizes the six main repetition patterns of teacher talk in high school English classrooms: self-,instant,expanded repetition;other-,instant,expanded repetition;other-,instant,exact repetition;self-,instant,extended repetition;self-,instant,translated repetition;self-,instant,exact repetition.And then the author combines with interviews and conversation analysis to explore the teaching purposes achieved by high school English teachers through repetition,and further summarizes the corresponding teaching functions of each structure: self-,instant,expanded repetition—emphasizing,explaining,pursuing questions;other-,instant,expanded repetition—supplementing,pursuing questions,giving feedback or correcting;other-,instant,exact repetition—accepting;self-,instant,extended repetition—interpreting,enlightening or sublimating emotions;self-,instant,translated repetition—explaining;self-,instant,exact repetition—emphasizing,making instructions clear.Finally,the author through the analysis of questionnaires and text reflected in the students’ classroom output judges whether the repetition in high school English classes has achieved the desired goal.The results show that:(1)The teacher repetition in the talk of high school English classrooms accounts for a larger proportion;(2)There are six main patterns of repetition in high school English classrooms;(3)Different repetition patterns have different functions;(4)Repetition in high school English classrooms is intentionally used by teachers for certain teaching purposes,but not all repetition is efficient.Even the same repetition pattern has different options for specific use.Based on the conclusions of this study,the author puts forward the appropriate suggestions and points out the remaining development space for future study.