An Investigation And Strategy Analysis Of Teacher’s Feedback In Junior Middle School English Classrooms

Teacher’s feedback refers to teacher’s verbal or non-verbal responses to the language,form,content,or other information involved in learners’ learning behaviors(answering,performance,practice,etc).As the key to triggering and maintaining effective classroom interaction(teacher-student interaction),teacher’s feedback is considered the core of improving the classroom interaction,and it is also one of the main sources of learners’ language input.And more importantly,teacher’s feedback not only reflects learners’ subjectivity in the learning process,but also facilitates learners’ language acquisition and creates a better environment for classroom interaction.Although there have been many studies on teacher’s feedback from English classrooms,especially in colleges and senior middle schools,little attention has been paid to the status quo and strategies of teacher’s feedback in junior middle school English classrooms.Thus,it is necessary to figure out which types of teacher’s feedback strategies will be more effective in building a vibrant and high-efficiency junior middle school English classroom.In this study,three English teachers and 148 students are taken as the research subjects from No.1 Junior Middle School of Wuhan ETDZ(Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone).The focus of the study is to investigate the status quo of teacher’s feedback,analyzing different feedback strategies,teachers’ and students’ attitudes as well as preferences towards teacher’s feedback through classroom observation and recording,questionnaires and interviews.Employing quantitative and qualitative analysis,this study achieves the four results: First,teachers mainly take verbal feedback strategy,seldom use or even lack non-verbal feedback strategy.Second,teachers use feedback strategies flexibly in different situations.Teachers tend to respond to students using positive verbal feedback,while completely negative feedback is rarely used in middle English classrooms.Third,students generally believe that the teacher’s feedback has a major influence on their classroom interactions,language input and output,but students’ attitudes and preferences for non-verbal feedback are uncertain,which may be related to teachers’ preferences and attitudes towards using teacher’s feedback.Fourth,when students answer correctly,cannot answer questions temporarily or answer incorrectly,students have different preferences towards teacher’s feedback.And these feedback strategies are inconsistent with most commonly used by teachers.Aiming at enhancing the quality of teacher’s feedback strategies used in the English classroom of junior middle school,some suggestions are put forward as follows: First,teachers should strengthen their post-class introspection and actively participate in the teaching training.Second,teachers should be student-centered and give more appropriate feedback strategies according to students’ different characteristics and language proficiency.Third,teachers should use a variety of teacher’s feedback strategies in class,especially the comprehensive application of non-verbal feedback and verbal feedback.Fourth,teachers should emphasize implicit correction feedback.