A Case Study On Teacher Talk In Effective Lead-ins Of The English Exemplary Lessons For Junior High School

With the continuous progress of the new curriculum reform,the quality of teaching plays an important role in improving the efficiency of a class.Every step of teaching is vital to the success of teaching.Lead-in,as the first step,can draw the students’ attention and stimulate their motivation of learning.In lead-in,teacher talk takes a large proportion,so the effective organization of teacher talk will influence the effect of lead-in.Therefore,it is very necessary to optimize teacher talk in lead-in.Lead-ins in the exemplary lessons,featured with well-design and high-quality,can be taken as demons for teachers to explore and internalize the ways of lead-in designs by using the theories and techniques learned in class.Driven by this,the research is based on the theories of Piaget’s Constructivism,Long’s Interaction Hypothesis and Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis.It involved20 teachers participating in English exemplary lessons as the research subjects,and their lead-ins were analyzed.Classroom observation was employed as the research method,and Text Inspector and Microsoft Word were used to analyze the text gained from transcription.The text was coded and analyzed from three aspects: the lexical complexity of teacher talk,the features of questioning and feedback in the lead-ins.This research attempts to answer three questions: 1.What are the characteristics of of teacher talk in lead-ins in terms of lexical complexity? 2.What are the features of teacher talk in lead-ins in terms of questioning? 3.What are the features of teacher talk in lead-ins in terms of feedback?Through data analysis,the research draws the following conclusions: 1.Most of the words used in the lead-ins are simple and concise that are easy for students to understand.Long and complicated words appear less frequently.The interaction between teachers and students is like daily communication,and words are closely related to students’ lives.2.The questioning ways of nominating and volunteering occurs frequently.Teachers prefer to use referential questions more than the display ones.3.The amount of discoursal feedback is much higher than evaluative feedback.Teachers like to use positive feedback.Feedback types like “Repeat and Praise”,“Praise and Comment”,“Repeat and Extension” are largely employed in the lead-ins.According to the major findings,some suggestions are provided for novice English teachers on how to better design and practice lead-in activities,especially in terms of teacher talk so as to improve teaching efficiency as well as teaching skills.