A Study On Teacher Feedback In English Classroom Interaction In Senior High School

Teacher feedback,as an important part of teacher discourse,plays a very important role in English language teaching.Effective teacher feedback can not only increases students’ motivation and incentive to learn,but also improves students’ language skills and thinking abilities.However,most of the current studies have focused on university and junior high school English classrooms,and relatively few studies have been conducted on the current situation of teacher feedback in senior high school English classrooms.Therefore,in this paper,four English teachers and220 students in the sophomore year of a high school in H City,Hubei Province were selected as the subjects of the study,and the following questions were investigated:(1)What is the status quo of using teacher feedback in the current senior high school English classroom?(2)What are the positive effects of different types of teacher feedback on classroom interaction? In what ways?Based on IRF discourse analysis theory,Krashen’s affective filter hypothesis and Micheal Long’s interaction hypothesis,this study analyzed the data of four teachers and their eight English classes through classroom observation,questionnaire and interview methods.After the study,this paper has the following main findings.Combining classroom observations,questionnaires and interviews,the author summarized some situations of teachers feedback in senior high school English classrooms:the amount of feedback discourse in the current senior high school English classrooms accounted for one-third of the amount of teacher discourse,indicating that teacher feedback is highly valued in senior high school English classrooms;there were ten single-type feedback and eight mixed-type feedback in the observed classrooms,and teachers used single-type feedback much more often than mixed-type feedback;in the process of observing the classrooms,the author found that although all four teachers recognized the importance of feedback,there were some problems in the process of using them.Second,through the study,the author found that teacher feedback have different positive effects on classroom interaction;teacher feedback can increase the number of discourse rounds to prolong the interaction length.Through classroom observations,five types of feedback,such as elicitation,questioning and extension,can trigger a continuous number of words rounds in single-type feedback.The five types of feedback such as praise plus extension,praise plus questioning,and repetition plus elicitation in mixed-type feedback can also trigger a continuous IRF pattern;teacher feedback can enhance students’ English proficiency to improve the quality of interaction;teacher feedback can promote students’ positive emotions to mobilize the interactive atmosphere.Based on the results of the study,the author makes the following three suggestions for improving the use of teacher feedback in senior high school English classrooms.First,teachers should pay attention to the amount of feedback they use.Second,teachers should improve their own quality and be flexible in using various types of feedback.Third,teachers’ feedback should be diverse and not simplistic.