A Survey Of College English Teachers' Directives In EFL Classroom In Xinjiang

Feuerstein (1980) suggests that from birth a child's learning is shaped by the intervention of significant adults, as mediators or mediating adults. These adults, at first parents, but later teachers, select and organize stimuli that they consider most appropriate for the child, shape them and present them in the ways considered most suitable to promote learning. In his theory of mediation, the teacher is regarded as a mediator during the teaching process. Consequently, the quality of the teacher's talk may determine or at least influence the teaching effect and the students'language learning.With more and more advocacy of task-based teaching methodology in EFL classrooms, attention has been paid to activities designed for the students. As a result, the importance of teachers'directives adopted to explain the contents and the procedures of an activity to students are enhanced. Meanwhile, in the classroom, directives are employed to control the students'behavior and to connect the teaching exchanges, by whose language functions the teacher's underlying attitude towards the students and their relationships might be revealed. Therefore, it is safe to say that teachers'directives will be very important for the second language acquisition of the students. Therefore, the teacher needs to have the awareness and skills of using a large variety of effective directives.This thesis will rely on previous studies of directives on the general guidelines and language functions, and studies based on the authentic transcriptions to carry on a multi-layer study on College English teachers'directives in Xinjiang with respect to linguistic forms and language functions in Chinese EFL classrooms.This study is made on the class observations, interviews, and transcriptions of some recording, as well as class notes of EFL classroom at Foreign Language School of Xinjiang University. The major findings are: 1) There are some differences on directives addressed by the NS teachers and the three NNS college teachers; 2) There is no significant difference on directives addressed by the ethnic minority teachers and Han teachers in the study, though there may have some tiny differences; 3) There is no significant difference between ethnic minority students'and Han students'learning of a foreign language in classroom in the area.This thesis, tries to make an initiate research on the college English teachers'directives in Xinjiang to derive some useful suggestions for language teachings, and finally to help language teachers improve their awareness of making good use of directives in an EFL classroom to promote the L2 or foreign language acquisition of students.