A Study On The Features Of Six Model Teachers' Talk And Its Enlightenments To High School English Teaching

Teacher Talk is very important to classroom teaching. As Nunan pointed out in 1991, Teacher Talk is extremely critical to both organizing classroom teaching and students'acquisition of the second language. This is because only with the assistance of perfectly organized Teacher Talk can teaching go smoothly and result in an active classroom atmosphere, which is greatly associated with teaching effect. Furthermore, Teacher Talk itself has the function of modeling as a target language and a key approach to students' input. Hakansson also states (1986) that the quality and quantity of Teacher Talk has great influence on and even decides the success of classroom teaching.The research made on Teacher Talk started in the 1970s in the west. Most of them show main concern about the features of Teacher Talk as a language input, such as speed, tone, lexis, syntax and discourse (Chaundron,1988) and many researches were restricted in teacher-centered classroom teaching. Recently more and more attention has been paid to teachers and Teacher Talk in Chinese classroom, while most of the researches are about university Teacher Talk and some linguistic features of Teacher Talk.Set in senior high school class, this research is done on six teachers' talking materials transcribed from their live teaching videos, A Hundred Model Lessons by Model Teachers recorded by the Central Radio & TV University. To probe useful enlightenments of Teacher Talk to improving classroom teaching in senior schools, based on some data and typical examples from the transcribed materials, the essay focuses on an analysis of the features of Teacher Talk, such as features of speed, accuracy, questioning, directives, evaluation, error treatment, interruption, and repetition, mainly including their merits and several weaknesses are also mentioned. Through observation, it's found that Teacher Talk has a direct impact on classroom atmosphere. That's to say, appropriate speed, high accuracy, effective questioning, positive evaluation, technical error treatment, effective directions, timely interruption and necessary repetition contribute much to an active and effective classroom atmosphere. Strengths of the six teachers'talking are what we should learn from when teaching and weaknesses are what we should avoid.At the end of the essay, suggestions are listed according to this research. To improve classroom atmosphere and ultimately improve teaching effect, English teachers should be aware of the importance of Teacher Talk as an input by making it accurate, comprehensible, and paying attention to the degree of difficulty when questioning. What's more, English teachers should also be concerned with the students' central role in teaching. When making directions, questioning, evaluating, and treating errors and when having to repeat or interrupt what the students say, we should respect them, and make them experience the sense of safety, achievement and pleasure. At last, English teachers should learn successful experience from others'and keep studying to develop an awareness of cross-culture to keep pace with the reform in English teaching. This research proves that Teacher Talk is key to successful classroom teaching and teachers should pay much attention to Teacher Talk and tactics when making use of them and as teachers we should improve ourselves to adapt to the needs of the reform made about senior high school class. Furthermore, great concern with Teacher Talk is significant for the current teaching reform.