A Study On The Effectiveness Of Teachers’ Classroom Discourse In Junior High School English Reading Classes

In EFL context,teacher talk serves as one of the main sources of students’ language input.The effectiveness of teachers’ classroom discourse will influence the progress of students’ learning and the construction of knowledge directly.At the present time,the research at home and abroad mainly focuses on microscopic perspectives,such as the quantity of teacher talk,teacher questioning,feedback and classroom interaction,lacking a holistic perspective.Still,some of the domestic researches on teachers’ classroom discourse concentrate more on the higher education stage.For this reason,this research is undertaken from three dimensions of English teachers’ classroom discourse including language features,language functions,and interactive features,thus improving quality of classroom discourse and achieving efficient English teaching.In this study,ten teaching videos from the 13 th National English Demonstration Class in junior high school were selected as the research object,and classroom observation and content analysis were applied to explore the effectiveness of English teachers’ classroom discourse in junior high school.This study focused on the following two questions:(1)What is the overall situation of the effectiveness of English teachers’ classroom discourse in junior high school?(2)What is the specific performance of English teachers’ classroom discourse in junior high school in terms of language features,language functions,and interactive features?This study found that:(1)For the overall situation of the effectiveness of English teachers’ classroom discourse in junior high school,teachers’ classroom discourse was at the ‘Qualified’ and ‘Good’ level.The effectiveness included language features,language functions,and interactive features.Among them,the score of language features was highest,followed by language functions.However,interactive features scored lowest.(2)In terms of language features,most teachers’ classroom discourse was authentic,logical,normative and repetitive.However,there were also minor problems in situational authenticity,content authenticity,logicality and normality.In the dimension of language functions,teachers’ classroom discourse played the functions of teaching,communication and feedback.Nonetheless,teachers adopted single feedback and failed to give specific,consistent and effective evaluation.From the perspective of interactive features,teachers could balance the direction of questioning.The atmosphere between teachers and students was harmonious.However,teachers’ classroom discourse took up too much time,and students rarely took the initiative to ask deep questions.Moreover,display questions outnumbered referential questions,and sufficient time was not given to students,which reduced their chances of language output.Besides,teachers failed to use different questioning strategies and negotiation of meaning to strengthen classroom interaction.Accordingly,some suggestions were put forward for English teachers to improve the effectiveness of English teachers’ classroom discourse in junior high school:(1)Value the quality of teachers’ classroom discourse,and improve professional ability and language literacy;(2)Improve the quality of feedback;(3)Reduce teachers’ talk time and increase students’ language output;(4)Employ questioning strategies and negotiation of meaning flexibly.