Teacher-Student Negotiation Of Meaning In Foreign Language Class:Interaction And Optimization

The teacher-student negotiation of meaning (or meaning negotiation) that occurs in foreign language class refers to the modification and restructuring jointly made by the teacher and students to the target foreign language they use in class when they anticipate, perceive, or experience difficulties in message comprehensibility. It aims to achieve better understanding, facilitate classroom interaction, and eventually help students to increase their ability to use the target foreign language. As a special pattern of verbal interaction in class, teacher-student meaning negotiation plays a very important role in boosting students’understanding of foreign language input, increasing their output, and prompting them to turn their attention to the form of the foreign language they use, and is, therefore, contributive to their accuracy and fluency in using the foreign language, and able to improve the quality of foreign language class.In today’s China, foreign language instruction is troubled by problems like domination of teacher over students, lack of two-way verbal communications between teacher and students, etc.. These problems, which seriously run against the basic rules inherent in language instruction, are so common and prominent that classroom foreign language instruction is being turned into something extremely dull, and is dampening, rather than stimulating, both the teacher’s and students’enthusiasm about the language they are learning. Consequently students are unlikely to become efficient foreign language users. Therefore, to do research and studies to find out the way to improve teacher-student meaning negotiation in foreign language class will not only help upgrade the existing language teaching theories, but also come up with solutions to problems beleaguering classroom foreign language instruction, and enhance classroom instruction efficiency and effectiveness.In the present research, what is done first is reviewing the relevant studies conducted previously at home and abroad, and then an investigation is made to find out how teacher-student meaning negotiation is carried out in foreign language class, this is followed by a profound and systematic analysis of the theoretical framework concerned, and a probe into the major issues concerning teacher-student negotiation of meaning in foreign language class. The research methods adopted include documentation, investigation, observation, theoretical analysis, and action research, etc..The main content of the present dissertation:Firstly, explains why the present research is initiated, defines key concepts involved, gives an overview of the related previous studies both at home and aboard, makes clear the purpose and significance of the present research endeavor, clarifies the logical sequence on which the present research is based, and the research methods to be adopted, introduces the framework and structure of the paper, and describes the originality and creativity of the present research effort.Secondly, carries out an investigation to find out how teacher-student meaning negotiation is conducted in foreign language class, to explore the actual meaning negotiation process, and to reveal the problems; makes a thorough and systematic analysis of a wide range of theories, including those from linguistics, psychology, sociology, and education, in an attempt to shed light on the optimization of teacher-student meaning negotiation; studies the meaning and connotation of this special verbal interaction, its funcitons, as well as the components or elements that comprise teacher-student meaning negotiation, including the subjects involved in the negotiation, the conditions needed to initiate the negotiation, the negotiation process, and the results of the negotiation; explores the strategies that may help to improve teacher-student meaning negotiation in foreign language class, and formulates a tentative teacher-student meaning negotiation optimization support system to facilitate the optimization endeavor.Thirdly, conducts an action research to apply the results of the forgoing theoretical studies and the optimization measures into practice, and to find out whether they can really work and bring positive changes to foreign language class. The result of the action research shows that shortage of teacher-student meaning negotiation is a serious problem plaguing foreign language teaching in China; to optimize teacher-student meaning negotiation is key to achieving the objectives of foreign language instruction; and the optimization of teacher-student meaning negotiation demands joint effort, including setting up an effective mechanism to encourage the teacher and students to actively and frequently negotiate meaning with each other, transforming and improving teachers’perceptions of teaching, and increasing their abilities to reflect over their teaching work and to use various skills to initiate negotiation with students.The main purpose of the present research is to gain a profound and deep insight into the teacher-student meaning negotiation, as well as the embedded problems, to elucidate the meaning and connotation of this special verbal interaction, its functions, as well as the components or elements that it is composed of, and as a result of this, to push the research work in this area a little bit forward based on its status quo. Specifically, the originality and creativity of the present research is mainly demonstrated in its effort to do the following in an unprecedented way:profoundly explore the actual process of teacher-student meaning negotiation, and the embedded problems; to define what teacher-student meaning negotiation is all about, to clarify its functions, and to specify it composition; and to establish a tentative teacher-student meaning negotiation optimization support system.Although the present research successfully comes up with a tentative teacher-student meaning negotiation optimization support system after going through a series of research steps, including reviewing the relevant studies performed previously both at home and abroad, investigating the teacher-student meaning negotiations in foreign language class, analyzing the theoretical framework, and probing into the major issues concerning teacher-student negotiation, and comes to research conclusions based on an action research, it is not without imperfections due to the limited scope and duration of the investigations, and more work needs to be done to make the conclusions more reliable and convincing.