Chinese Teachers' Use Of Encouraging Language In The Classroom Situation In Thailand

During classroom activities,students pay close attention to the manner of the teacher.This means it can effect on the student's development,and the use of language of encouragement is a very important part of this.The use of encouraging language by Chinese teachers can directly help students increase their interest in their studies,help them build confidence,improve their learning efficiency,help with obtaining good teaching results,invigorate the classroom atmosphere and close the student-teacher barrier e.t.c.This thesis will use classroom observations,interview surveys and questionnaires to research the situational use of encouraging language in four schools in Thailand's Chiang Rai province,focussing discussion on the feedback of students to encouraging language and the influence that Chinese language teachers' use of encouraging language in the classroom has,and furthermore from this foundation pick out important topics on the subject of encouraging language in the classroom.This thesis has 5 sections.The first section is an introduction,including background on the research,targets,implications and a research statement.The second section covers an outline of relevant concepts within the research plan,discussing and analysing core concepts concerning the use of set encouragement language in the classroom,and their types,also introducing the research plan,the classroom observations,and an explanation of the questionnaire survey and the interviews.Aside from this,this section will also be introducing the four schools in Chiang Rai province used in the research,namely Samakkhiwitthayakhom school.Damrongratsongkroh School,Maechanwitthayakhom school and Chiangrai municipality school 5 Denha.The third section will be an analysis of the results of the classroom observations and the interviews,firstly using an analysis of the compiled data from the classroom observations to analyse the use of encouragemental language in the four schools,and from this analysing,comparing and contrasting oral phrases of encouragement and physical gestures of encouragement,and then analysing the data from the interviews,mainly focussing on the the current situation of use of classroom encouragemental language,usage targets,usage methods,usage criteria and the content's effects on student's studies.The third section also brings together and analyses the average amount of usage of encouragemental language,and then compares the similarities and differences of average usage rates of encouragemental language of both native Chinese Chinese teachers and native Thai Chinese teachers.The fourth section is an analysis of the results of the feedback of students towards Chinese teacher's use of language of encouragement,using average grades e.t.c.in comparison to questionnaire surveys to carry out the analysis,and from this,deeper analysing the four middle school's student's feedback,thoughts and reactions to the Chinese teacher's use of encouraging language in the classroom.The fifth section concerns itself with the existing problems that Chinese teachers have in the four schools with encouraging language.Of these problems,it focuses on the various activities commonly held in Thai schools,resulting in a lack of sufficient time for Chinese lessons,making them therefore lack time for use of encouragement with the students.Chinese and Thai teachers both have the problem of bridging the student-teacher divide.Following this,it provides suggestions to remedy the problems.The discoveries of the research for this thesis are as follows:Firstly,the Chinese teachers of the four schools all had different usage rates,and their exists a difference between the usage rates of encouragemental language between native Thai and native Chinese teachers,but these differences are due to personal character,classroom habits,language barriers and the relationships between teachers and students.Secondly,most of the students' feedback to encouragemental language used by the teachers was positive,expressing that the use of these language had a large impact,such as making the students feel more confident in their studies,strengthening the students' enthusiasm and interest,and giving them the motivation to continue studying Chinese.One point raised by the research that was especially important was that it is not the case that simply using more encouragemental language was better,but that sometimes,ill-timed use of encouragemental language could damage the student's confidence and positivity,even making the student lose interest in studying Chinese.Because of this,it is obvious that correct use of encouragemental language should be study thoroughly by every Chinese teacher.Because of the writer's lack of experience,this research had limits and a few weaknesses,for example it does not have observations of distinct lesson types,and just has observations of the four middle school's Chinese teachers' overall curriculums.The student's questionnaires did not completely distinguish between the nationalities of the teachers,and this may result in an incomplete comparison of Chinese teachers of Thai and Chinese nationalities' use of situational language of encouragement in the classroom.The writer hopes that in the future she can continue her efforts in her studies,and proceed to deepen her research into other Chinese lessons,and furthermore conduct a more comprehensive study into the differences in situational use of encouraging language in the classroom between native Chinese Chinese teachers and native Thai Chinese teachers and provide a more comprehensive comparison.