A Comparative Study Of College English Learners' Conversation Structure In Class And After Class

This research centers on learners'conversation in oral English class and after class. On the basis of recording data from oral English class and English Corner, this thesis, by making use of conversation analysis theory, analyzes the Chinese undergraduates'English conversation structure from three aspects, namely, turn-taking, back-channel item and repair mechanism, with the purpose to discover and summarize the characteristics of Chinese undergraduates'conversation in oral English classroom and that in English Corner and then make a comparison between them, so as to offer some suggestions for improving the teaching quality.The major findings are as follows:Firstly, it is because of the teacher's dominance of turn that the students seldom take the turn initiatively and they have few chances and little time to practice in oral classroom. In student-student interaction, when it is difficult for students to continue the fixed topic designed by teacher, they neither take the turn by self-selection nor change the topic, but communicate according to the pattern that they have prepared. In such case, communication would be a pseudo-communication because the interlocutors can not fully convey their own ideas. This is a dramatic contrast with that in English Corner, where the interlocutors can take the turn when it is suitable and change topics at will. Such kind of communication would be helpful to improve oral English.Secondly, the teacher's dominance of turn exerts some influence on students'English learning interests. Thus, it leads to the fact that students'linguistic back-channel item is few, though the non-linguistic back-channel item occurs from time to time. Through the analysis of data collected in English Corner, it is found that the back-channel item---both the linguistic form and non-linguistic form occur more frequently than that in class.Thirdly, teachers attach much more importance to the repair of linguistic form errors than that of linguistic meaning or information while it is opposite side in English Corner, that is to say, the interlocutors in English Corner pay more attention to the meaning or information of the speech.Moreover, the thesis has elaborated these differences from the point of cultural factors, face theory, psychology and so on. Based on these, the implications to spoken English teaching are presented.