A Study On Teacher Talk In Primary School English Class Based On Walsh’s SETT Framework

English education has been the essential part in China’s basic educational curriculum system for many years.Currently,English course is set as the compulsory course in most primary and secondary schools at the compulsory education stage in China.Teacher talk in English classroom instruction can provide teachers an important tool to organize classroom activities as well as bring effective knowledge input for students’ English study.English teachers’ thoughtful self-evaluation on their talk in the classroom discourse will contribute a lot to the improvement of teachers’ classroom practices and the enhancement of teaching effectiveness.Based on a large corpus of English as Foreign Language(EFL)teachers’ classroom discourse,Walsh proposed the Self-Evaluation of Teacher Talk(SETT)framework,under which four interactional modes are identified and each mode is characterized by different typical interactional features.SETT framework provides a new theoretical perspective to explore foreign language teacher talk as well as an analyzing instrument for teachers to reflect on their own teaching performances in classroom discourse.Previous domestic studies on the SETT framework mainly focus on the English teachers in middle schools or colleges,yet little attention has been paid to the teacher talk in primary schools.Based on Walsh’s SETT framework,this study recruited eight English teachers from a primary school in Nanchuan District,Chongqing,China as the participants.Through the conduction of classroom observation,videotaping and interview,the present study aims to investigate eight participants’ teacher talk in English classroom instruction.There are three questions as follows:(1)How many interactional modes can be found in the participants’ teacher talk? What are the specific modes and their distributions?(2)What are the interactional features adopted by the participants in different interactional modes?(3)What potential weaknesses can be identified in the participants’ teacher talk?After the collected data from classroom observation were transcribed,NVivo11 was employed to code the transcription data.And quantitative analysis and thematic analysis were then conducted to analyze the interactional modes and their interactional features.The final results were indicated as follows:(1)Three types of interactional modes,namely managerial mode,materials mode,as well as skills and systems mode,were identified in most of the eight participants’ teacher talk,yet classroom context mode was found to be missing in some participants’ teacher talk.The four interactional modes are alternatively adopted by eight English teachers.Materials mode is most frequently used(58.0%),followed by skills and systems mode(22.4%)and managerial mode(16.5%)respectively,while classroom context mode is least commonly used(3.1%).Moreover,it is noteworthy that mode switching and mode side sequence exhibit distinctive features.(2)As for interactional features,the managerial mode is characterized by the transitional markers and extended teacher turn.The materials mode is realized through display questions and IRF pattern.The display questions and direct repairs are dominant features in the skills and systems mode whereas referential questions are prevailing in classroom context mode.(3)The teacher participants tend to use more display questions and fewer referential questions in English classroom discourse.There is a lack of the construction of interactive language classroom context,especially for oral practice.The teacher participants attach more stress to form-focused feedback yet ignore the cultivation of students’ communicative abilities.The quantitative and qualitative findings of this study provide the details about teacher talk and underlines the functions of teacher talk in primary school.The results provide pedagogical implications that English teachers in primary school should strengthen their self-reflections on teacher talk,and improve their awareness of setting up interactional language context for students’ English study.Additionally,English teachers in primary schools are supposed to enhance their questioning skills and try to provide various feedbacks.Moreover,schools are supposed to attach great importance to teachers’ classroom discourse and launch teaching training program on teacher talk.Furthermore,the education department should establish a sound system for evaluating English teacher talk.The findings also help to advance the research on teacher talk by providing a new theoretical perspective with a broadened scope in primary schools,promoting the localized development of the SETT framework in China’s EFL context.