A Comparative Study Of The Teacher Talk Between Novice And Expert English Teachers In Junior High School

In language teaching,teacher talk is of vital importance.It not only carries a rich language and culture,but also undertakes the important tasks of teachers in organizing classroom activities and implementing teaching plans,and is the main source of students’ input of the target language in the English classroom.Some scholars believe that the success of classroom teaching depends largely on whether the teacher’s discourse is effective or not,and that only when students understand the target language deeply can they really learn it,and that the teacher’s discourse is inseparable from students’ second language acquisition.Therefore,it is necessary to study and analyze teachers’ classroom discourse in depth and summarize the rules of it.At present,there are still various discourse barriers to teaching in junior high school English classrooms,especially for novice English teachers,whose discourse systems are still immature and there is a huge gap between them and expert teachers.Therefore,it is necessary to observe and analyze the classroom discourse characteristics of expert and novice teachers in the middle school period.Research on the differences in classroom discourse between the two types of teachers can facilitate the learning and transformation of novice teachers into expert teachers and thus provide lessons for novice teachers to transition to the next stage of skilled teachers.The studies that have been conducted focus on the analysis of teachers’ classroom discourse and pay less attention to students.In teaching,the interaction between teachers and students is a two-way street.Focusing only on teachers’ teaching without focusing on students’ performance is obviously not objective and comprehensive enough.Therefore,this paper places the research perspective on the English classroom at the junior high school level and analyzes teachers’ discourses while focusing on students’ behavioral performance under these discourses.The author attempts to address the following three main research questions:1.What are the differences in teacher talk volume between expert teachers and novice teachers in junior high school?2.What are the differences between expert teachers and novice teachers in terms of introduction,questioning,interactive adjustment and feedback?3.How to promote teacher development by comparing the classroom discourse of two types of teachers?Based on previous theories and practices,this study takes an expert junior high school English teacher and a novice teacher in the internship school as the subjects of the study and analyzes their classroom discourse comparatively.First,the author collected research data through classroom recordings,and converted the recordings into texts,which were then classified according to different criteria.The data analysis included five aspects: teacher discourse volume,teacher questioning,introduction,interaction adjustment,and feedback.Next,the author interviewed the two teachers and the students in the classes they taught,and briefly recorded the interviews.Finally,based on the collected data,the author identified the differences between the two types of teachers’ classroom discourse.The findings of this study are as follows:In response to the first research question,novice teachers had a greater percentage of classroom discourse than expert teachers,and students did not have enough time for language output in novice teachers’ classrooms.In response to the second research question,there were significant differences between the two teachers in all five of these areas.The expert teachers were more adept than the novice teachers at introducing the class and then developing the content based on the textbook and students’ needs.In terms of classroom questioning,the novice teachers tended to be less skillful in asking questions and rarely asked students to make secondary additions.At the same time,the interaction between teachers and students in the novice teachers’ classrooms was also problematic,as teachers were more concerned about whether students could understand the content and did not know enough about students’ existing knowledge,while expert teachers were more adept at using interaction adjustments to guide students’ discourse output.Finally,in terms of teacher feedback,both types of teachers gave positive feedback,but the novice teachers failed to give further guidance to the students’ feedback and simply praised and repeated the students’ words.In response to the third research question,some suggestions are made in this study mainly from the perspective of novice teachers and teacher training in order to facilitate teacher development.For novice teachers,first,they should improve their awareness of teacher discourse in the classroom and control the amount of discourse they use in the classroom.Second,they should engage in reasonable pre-class preparation and post-class reflection and summarization.Thirdly,novice teachers should consciously pay attention to and learn the advantages of expert teachers’ classroom discourse to make up for their own shortcomings.Finally,novice teachers should pay attention to the non-verbal factors in teachers’ classroom discourse,pay attention to their own expressions,tone of voice and body movements in class,and try to overcome the problem that they tend to be nervous in class.In addition,in the process of teacher training,we should establish various proven mechanisms for professional development and training of teachers to improve the scientific nature of teacher construction.In summary,expert teachers are better able to use classroom discourse to organize the classroom and teach well;while novice teachers have certain problems with their introduction,questioning,teacher-student interaction and feedback discourse.In the process of junior high school English teaching practice,novice teachers obviously lacked sufficient teaching experience and their adaptability needed to be improved.