On The Characteristics And Interpersonal Functions Of English Teachers’ Moral Discourse In Classrooms Of Junior Middle Schools

English Curriculum Standard for Compulsory Education(2022 Edition)states that the English subject should clearly position itself as a moral education subject and play the functions of educating students.This is an important role in guiding students to form correct values and good behaviors.This study focuses on the characteristics and interpersonal functions of English teachers’ moral discourse in classrooms of junior middle schools and tries to explore the ways to improve the effectiveness of teachers’ moral discourse,which provides an important reference for improving the educating functions of junior middle school English curriculum.Based on Feng Dezheng’s multimodal analysis framework of positive values,Zhang Delu’s multimodal discourse analysis Framework,Sigrid Norris’ multimodal interaction analysis theory and Holliday’s interpersonal function theory,this study uses ELAN 6.4 and UAM Corpus Tool3.3x annotation software to conduct a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 20 videos of junior middle school English teachers’ classroom in a district secondary school in Xiamen.The following three questions are addressed:(1)What are the characteristics of English teachers’ moral discourse in classrooms of Junior Middle Schools?(2)What kind of interpersonal functions are achieved by English teachers’ moral discourse in classrooms of Junior Middle Schools?(3)What are the problems that exist in English teachers’ moral discourse in classrooms of Junior Middle Schools?The study analyzed the characteristic of English teachers’ classroom discourse from moral education in three dimensions: distributional features in teaching sessions,verbal modalities,and non-verbal modalities.The preliminary findings are that:(1)English Teachers’ moral discourse in classrooms of Junior Middle Schools mainly focuses on the lead-in and knowledge output sessions,but less on the knowledge input and summarizing stages;(2)English teachers in junior middle schools tend to use more explicit judgmental discourse than implicit discourse in delivering moral education;In terms of embedded discourse;(3)Teachers are more likely to use multimodal resources that combine text or text and images as a complementary resource to the moral discourse,with less use of video and music;(4)English teachers in junior middle schools use deictic gestures and metaphorical gestures more frequently,with deictic gestures being used to attract students’ attention and metaphorical gestures being used to express positive and abstract concepts;(5)In terms of eye contact,teachers make more eye contact with the overall class and less eye contact with individual students;teachers spend more time gazing at the screen,and less with individual students;teachers mainly keep an informal distance from the students.In addition,there are also some differences in the individual characteristics of English teachers’ moral discourse in classrooms of junior middle schools: novice teachers tend to use more moral discourse in the leadin session,while proficient teachers use more in the summary and homework stage and expert teachers deliver more moral discourse in the knowledge input stage;novice teachers are more likely to use more explicit judgmental moral discourse in classrooms while expert teachers use more implicit moral discourse;novice teachers use video and music as a complementary resource to the moral discourse more frequently than proficient teachers and expert teachers;expert teachers tend to adopt deictic gestures more frequently,but novice and proficient teachers use metaphorical gestures more often;expert teachers make more eye contact with individual students and the overall class,and spend less time gazing at the screen;expert teachers keep a personal distance from students more frequently than novice and proficient teachers.With the accumulation of teachers’ experiences,the moral discourse moves from the explicit to the implicit and is gradually internalized;teachers will also pay more and more attention to communication with students,thus achieving a better effectiveness of moral education.Different interpersonal functions are achieved through moral discourse by the English teachers.Teachers tend to shorten the distance with students by using plural personal pronouns in moral education to create a good discourse atmosphere;teachers tend to use a declarative tone to output the content of moral discourse and use a questioning tone to guide students to make judgments;teachers use a large number of low value modal words to show their respect for students and build an equal teacher-student relationship.It can be found that English teachers’ moral discourse has achieved a good interpersonal function in classrooms of junior middle schools,but there are also the following problems:(1)There is an uneven distribution of moral discourse in the teaching procedures;(2)There is more explicit moral discourse than implicit discourse;(3)Different multi-modal resources are not coordinated well in moral education;(4)There is less attention and eye contact with individual students.Hence,countermeasures are proposed to tackle the problems:(1)It is necessary to implement the moral education throughout teaching stages;(2)Teachers should integrate and coordinate the resources of each modality in moral discourse and carry out moral education in a multimodal,multi-channel and multi-faceted manner;(3)It is significant to balance explicit and implicit moral discourse and enhance the impact of implicit moral education;(4)Teachers should promote more bi-directional moral education discourse communication with the students and avoid unidirectional moral education in order to achieve empathy and efficiency of moral education.The innovations of this study include:(1)The object of the study is new.The focus of the study is English teachers in junior middle schools,enlarging the scope of relevant research on moral education,which mainly focuses on university teachers’ classroom moral education;(2)The materials of the study are new.English teachers’ multimodal discourse materials on moral education are analyzed,which may compensate for the previous studies on textual materials;(3)The research perspective is new.The path towards effective interpersonal functions through teachers’ moral discourse in English classrooms is explored and a practical empathy modal is built for further implementation of moral education in English classrooms in junior middle schools.