A Case Study Of High School English Teacher Talk In Grammar And Reading Classes Within Walsh's SETT Framework

In recent years,there has been a lot of research about teacher talk at home and abroad.But most of them focus on English teacher talk in college and little attention is paid to high school English teacher talk,especially in grammar and reading classes.Besides,little research is based on Walsh's SETT(Self-Evaluation of Teacher Talk)framework.Thus,this research employs Walsh's SETT framework to explore three questions: 1)Are four modes of SETT framework all present in the teacher's grammar and reading classes,and how are they distributed in grammar and reading classes? 2)Are there any similarities and differences in the distribution of both modes and interaction features between grammar and reading classes? If yes,what are the similarities and differences? 3)From the perspective of the teacher,what are the factors resulting in the differences in interaction features between grammar and reading classes?In order to answer research questions,the researcher selected a teacher with over 20 years' teaching experience as the subject.Firstly,the researcher used two telephones to record the teacher's twelve English classes,among which eight grammar and reading classes were transcribed according to Walsh's transcription system,because four other recordings were not intact and didn't belong to grammar or reading classes.Secondly,the researcher identified and analyzed modes and interaction features based on SETT framework.Here the researcher calculated the frequency and percentage of modes and interaction features.Thirdly,a comparison was conducted to explore similarities and differences in the distribution of both modes and interaction features between reading and grammar classes.At last,the researcher made an interview outline and interviewed the teacher to identify the factors causing the differences in interaction features.Through analysis,some conclusions can be made as follows:First,not all modes are present in grammar and reading classes.Classroom context mode only appears in reading class 1 and 4.And the percentage of each mode is different.Materials mode and skills and system mode are the dominant modes.Second,the results of contrastive analysis show that there are similarities in the distribution of both modes and interaction features,but there are more differences in the distribution of interaction features between grammar and reading classes.About similarities in the distribution of modes,there is managerial mode,materials mode and skills and system mode in all grammar and reading classes;moreover,materials mode and skills and system mode are the dominant modes in both types of classes.The proportion of materials mode is respectively 45.5%,34.1%,36% and 42.4% in four grammar classes.And in four reading classes,the proportion of this mode is respectively 46%,60.3%,51.7%,and 54.1%.Skills and system mode respectively accounts for 51.1%,59.7%,52%,46.5% in four grammar classes and the mode respectively makes up 41.9%,33.3%,41.7%,25.8% in four reading classes.In terms of similarities in interaction features,some of them are used in both types of classes,for example,transitional markers,comprehension checks and extended teacher turn can be used within managerial mode of grammar and reading classes.As for great differences in interaction features between grammar and reading classes,they can be reduced to one point: the proportion of some interaction features in grammar and reading classes is quite different,for example,in materials mode of grammar classes,the teacher mostly uses display questions(41.7%),but 11.3% of interaction features are display questions in reading classes where the most frequently used feature is teacher echo(19.1%).Third,the factors that cause the differences in interaction features between grammar and reading classes can be reduced to two points: one is different pedagogical goals for which the teacher uses different interaction features in grammar and reading classes;the other factor is that different teaching strategies are used in reading and grammar classes.The study provides some pedagogical implications for how to improve teacher talk to better achieve pedagogical goals and advance language teaching and learning in the EFL context,however,due to limited data,respondents and research time,there are some limitations to be improved in future research.