A Study On Teacher-student Interaction In Intermediate-level Oral Chinese Classrooms

Guided by the qualitative research method, this study investigates teacher-student interaction in two intermediate-level oral Chinese classrooms at a university.The intermediate-level oral Chinese learning is an important step in students' learning process, for it is not only a review of those learned knowledge at the beginning step; also, it serves as a stepping-stone in future learning. To go further, students learn the knowledge of oral Chinese and polish their oral Chinese competence through communicating with teachers, which we called teacher-student interaction. In our classrooms, the primary procedure of teaching oral Chinese is as follows:teacher poses a question---students give response----teacher presents feedback and evaluation. It is mainly in this process students learn knowledge as well as improving their communicative competence. The teacher-student interaction has its special use if a student makes an error, when teacher's corrective feedback happens. Therefore, paying attention to the teacher-student interaction should not be omitted in the field of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language (TCSL).This study focuses on two questions:First, what are characteristics of teacher-student interaction in large oral Chinese classes? Second, as teachers and students consist of the interaction, how do they feel about this process? Keeping these two questions in mind, the author collected data and information by observing two intermediate-level classes and interviewing teachers and a few students. After analyzing these data and information, the author tries to describe and explain what are happening in the process of teacher-student interaction.The findings of this research could be presented this way:presently, the teacher-student interaction is not going smoothly for every student. Some students are active in this process while others are not. In addition, whether teacher-student interaction proceeded smoothly or not, the reasons could be found from several aspects. In other words, both teachers and students affect the process of this interaction. Possible reasons include teachers' personal conditions, distribution of questions, teachers' waiting time, the difficulty levels of questions, students' cultural background and characteristics, students' motivations, students' oral Chinese levels.In Chapter 1,the author discusses the aims and objectives of this research, and the significance of it. In addition, this chapter presents the studying background from three aspects:researches on oral Chinese at intermediate level, theories of classroom interaction, and the qualitative researches in TCSL.Chapter 2 describes the research framework and methodology, and discusses the impact of the researcher on this research. This chapter also explains the process of choosing participants, collecting and analyzing data.Chapter 3 is a comprehensive description of the research environment and the current teacher-student interaction. It presents the information of the classes, students and teachers in this research; then describes and explains the current situation of teacher-student interaction in these classes from three aspects:who is speaking, teacher's activities, and students'activities. The last part in this chapter tells what exactly happens in a typical teacher-student interaction in a class.Chapter 4 is teachers' reflection on the current situation of teacher-student interaction in their classes. The author extracts three subjects from materials:the internal reasons, the external reasons, and teachers'description of the ideal interaction in their minds.Chapter 5 views teacher-student interaction from students' perspective. In this chapter, the author discusses what students feel about the interaction in their classes and their expectations to an ideal interaction.The last chapter summarizes this research, and presents several suggestions to oral Chinese teachers. Then, the author also discusses the limitations of this research.