A Turn-taking Analysis Of Special Teacher Talk

Special teacher talk is used by special teacher in language training class for special children(Here refers to the children with autism).Previous research showed that a majority of researchers on teacher talk by turn-taking analysis,and most of them focused on foreign language teaching classes,only less on non-foreign language teaching classes.At the same time,the research on special teachers mostly concentrated on the investigation of their professional status,and few people pay attention to their talk in classroom.This thesis takes the special teacher talk in the language training class for children with autism as the research sample,aiming at exploring how to better promote autistic children’s language understanding and expression ability by using turn-taking theory.Specifically,the research questions are as follows:1.What is the quantitative distribution of turns between special teachers and children with autism in the language training class?2.How are the turn-taking rules applied by special teachers in the language training class for autistic children?3.Is there any turn-silence for children with autism in the language training class?If yes,what lies behind this phenomenon?Five special teachers were randomly selected from three professional training institutions for autistic children in Taiyuan city.Then,one period of training classes of the five teachers were respectively recorded,observed in class and interviewed accordingly.The main findings are as follows:1.The number of turns of the five special teachers selected is 176,168,183,167 and 158,accounting for 54.15%,61.09%,51.12%,56.42% and 64.23% of the total number of turns in the classroom,respectively.The data show that turn-taking of special teachers is more than 50%,indicating that the quantity of autistic children’s turn is still unexpected.While the proportion of turn-taking in autistic children can reach 48.88%,which manifests that some autistic children,after training,are able to contribute a lot ofturns in the class.2.In order to fully improve the language output of autistic children in language training class,special teachers firstly take the way of teacher questioning to initiate the turn-taking.Then,special teachers adopt the way of teacher feedback to maintain the turn.Considering that each autistic child’s language comprehension and output ability are different,special teachers will make a basic assessment of each child’s language ability before each semester starts,and provide different turn initiation and maintenance skills accordingly based on each child’s language assessment results.3.The turn-taking silence may occur when special teachers ask the questions in the language training class.On account of the autistic children’s own language barriers and distraction,etc.,special teachers usually give timely(no more than 3 seconds)prompts to help the child finish the turn-taking when silence occurs in class.However,we have to point out that sometimes turn-taking silence occurs when autistic children spend time searching for the answers.The special teachers do not give the child enough time,which does no good to the development of these children’s independent thinking ability.