Influences Of The Modification Of Teacher Talk On Middle School Students' Oral English Proficiency

Classroom instruction is the main form of English teaching in middle schools in China. Teacher talk, the language which teachers use to organize classroom instruction and facilitate students' acquisition, is of crucial importance. As Nunan (1991: 189) points out, teacher talk is of crucial importance, not only for the organization of the classroom but also for the processes of acquisition. It is important for the organization and managenment of the classroom because it is through language that teachers either succeed or fail to implement their teaching plans. In terms of acquisition, teacher talk is important because it is probably the major source of comprehensible target language input the learner is likely to receive. "The amount and type of teacher talk is even regarded as a decisive factor of success or failure in classroom teaching" (Hakansson, 1986).However, up to now, researches on teacher talk in Western countries have tended to focus on the features of teacher talk only for language input purposes. As to the modification of teacher talk, much attention has been paid to pronunciation, intonation, tempo of speech, adjustments on the levels of vocabulary, syntactic structure and text (Chaudron, 1988). Furthermore, these researches have been conducted in FL environments and what they have investigated are teacher-centered classrooms. In China, there have been only a few studies on certain aspects of teacher talk. Only a few empirical studies on teacher talk in middle school classrooms have been carried out; and even fewer studies on the influence of the modification of teacher talk on middle school students' oral English proficiency can be found. On the other hand, in the traditional teacher-centered classroom instruction in middle schools in China, there exist three main problems in teacher talk: 1) teachers only concentrate on passing on knowledge to students and little attention is paid to students' needs and reactions to teacher talk; 2) some teachers lack the experience of teaching training, so they do not know how to adjust their talkaccordingly; 3) teachers only pay attention to examination results, ignoring the development of students' oral . English profociency. Consequently, classroom instruction can not be conducted successfully; and it is commonly thought that the major defects of middle school students lie in their low proficiency of oral English. For the reasons above, the present study intends to explore the problems from three aspects: 1) characteristics of teacher talk in middle school classroom instruction; 2) influences of the modification of teacher talk on middle school students' oral English proficiency; 3) how to develop students' oral English proficiency from the modification of teacher talk. Two empirical studies are included in the present thesis.One is the study on the characteristics of teacher talk. It concerns the following four aspects: 1) the amount of teacher talk; 2) questions of teacher talk; 3) feedback of teacher talk; and 4) teacher-student interaction. The subjects involved are five teachers from four different middle schools in Hengyang District, Hunan Province. The four schools were chosen by the way of stratified sampling. That is to say, they were the key middle school, the ordinary middle school, the school in the urban area as well as the school in the rural area. The teachers' teaching processes were recorded and then transcribed into scripts for analysis. Also involved in this study are 277 grade-2 students from senior middle schools. They were asked to respond to the questionnaire (Appendix I) on English classroom teacher talk. The questionnaire was administered to lend some supports to the result of the transcription analysis. The qualitative and quantitative analyses of the results show that teacher talk in middle school classroom instruction has the following characteristics:Firstly, there are more teacher talk than student talk. The amount varies with class type, the teacher's age, personality, belief and the experience of teaching training.Secondly, generally speaking, teacher questions lack the value of real communication in that most of the questions are raised to displayknowledge. There are few questions that require the students to express themselves and make evaluations. Repetition is the most frequently used modification device, though it is the least effective.Thirdly, teachers tend to provide feedbacks with more input and implicit negative feedback is often used in the classroom.Fourthly, there is an unequal distribution of participation in teacher-student interaction. Very scanty use of interactional modification on the part of the students is observed. When communicative problems arise, comprehension checks are the most frequently used mode (67.6%), followed by confirmation checks (58.7%) and clarification requests (43.2%).Based on the findings of the first study, the other study is on influences of the modification of teacher talk on middle school students' oral English proficiency. A questionnaire (Appendix II) was administered to the students of the five classes mentioned in the above and from them two classes were chosen as the subjects. The study includes: 1) a questionnaire on oral English study (Appendix III) and 2) an oral English test (Appendix IV). In April 2004, the questionnaire on oral English study was given to the two classes. It was divided into two parts. The first part concerned the students' personal information such as name, age, the junior middle schools they graduated from and their scores in the entrance examination for senior middle schools. The second part was about their oral English study. In May 2004, the oral English test was carried out in order to find out whether there exists any difference between the students' oral English proficiency. The oral test was based on the criteria of PETS-2 (Public English Test System, level 2). Then a comparative study was conducted on the students' personal information, their oral English study, their scores in the oral test and their scores in the entrance examination for senior middle schools. The results prove the hypothesis that there is a significant influence of the modification of teacher talk on middle school students' oral English proficiency, especially on the students' grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and interactive...