A Study Of Teachers' Roles In The Process Of Junior Two English Classroom Interaction

In China,English is taught as a foreign language and the use of English is limited within a narrow scope,and English classes are undoubtedly one of the main channels for students to use the language.All teaching activities that take place in the classroom have a direct impact on students' language learning.Classroom interaction is an important part of teaching activities and tasks,and leads to promoting and developing students' language ability.The New English Curriculum Standards for junior high schools emphasizes the development of students' comprehensive language competence,indicating that teachers need to change from a single knowledge imparter role to multiple roles in their teaching,so as to better realize the goals of language knowledge,language skills,attitude to learning,learning strategies and cultural awareness set and proposed by the new curriculum standards.The diversity of teachers' roles is of great significance for developing students' comprehensive language competence.At present,although there have been some research on teachers' roles in classroom interaction both in China and in other countries,most of them only emphasize that teachers should play multiple roles,focusing on comparing teachers' and students' different perceptions of teachers' roles,or comparing differences between expert teachers and novice teachers from the perspective of teachers' roles.Not too much research has been done on what roles teachers play in EFL classroom interaction,and how teachers use interactive behaviors to construct and form these roles.This study adopts a qualitative research method,and classroom observation and teacher interviews are used to collect data.Five English teachers are involved as research objects.Through classroom observation of 25 hours of Junior Two English classes and interviews with five teachers,this study aims to find answers to the following research questions:(1)During the process of classroom interaction,what are the popular roles played by the teachers teaching Junior Two English classes? And how much does each of the teacher roles account for respectively in classroominteraction?(2)How do teachers construct and form these roles based on classroom interactive behaviors?By analyzing the data and information obtained from the classroom observation and the interviews,the following conclusion is reached:(1)According to Harmer's study,eight different teachers' roles were identified.However,in Junior Two English classroom interaction,only six teachers' roles are found,namely,“assessor”,“organizer”,“promoter”,“tutor”,“observer”,and “resource”.(2)Among the six roles,the teachers play their roles differently.“Teachers as assessors” accounts for 35.78%,“teachers as organizers” accounts for 18.30%,“teachers as prompters” accounts for15.18%,“teachers as tutors” accounts for 11.77%,“teachers as observers” accounts for 9.08%,and “teachers as resource” accounts for 8.79%.In previous studies,teachers' roles were found to be mostly “prompters”,“organizers”,and “tutors”,but in this study,“teachers as assessors” accounts for a relatively larger proportion.This may be Junior Two students have difficulties in understanding English and expressing in English,and teachers need to constantly assess their students' learning results to further adjust teaching activities.Therefore,in the classroom teaching,teachers produce many assessing behaviors;(3)Teachers use “simple feedback”,“display questions” and “comprehension questions” to construct their roles as assessors;Teachers use a lot of “instructions” and less “discipline maintenance” to construct their roles as organizers;Teachers employ “referential questions”,“inductive feedback”,together with “implicit feedback”,to construct their roles as prompters;Teachers construct their roles as tutors through “explanation”;Teachers achieve their roles as observers through “observation” and their roles as “resource” through“feedback with extra words”.This study,from a relatively new perspective of mediation theory and activity theory in sociocultural theory,presents the process how teachers achieve their roles through the intermediary tool of interactive behaviors.This study is helpful for teachers to deepen their understanding of the relationship between classroom interactive behaviors and teachers' roles,providing a reference for teachers to make better use of interactive behaviors to construct and play different roles,so that teachers can better promote the development of students' comprehensive language competence.