| Teacher talk in the classroom has been an important research topic for foreign linguists and second language acquisition researchers. In China, the analysis of classroom discourse began in the 20th century, and most of the research was done in the key universities. The results show that the time of teachers'speaking accounts for 70% to 80% of the classroom time. However, the importance of teacher talk in the actual English classroom is often not given due attention. Fewer people have done research on the verbal feedback of English teachers in recent years, hence the relevant problems still need detailed exploration.Teacher feedback is an important aspect of teacher talk. It is not only an important medium for interaction between teachers and students, but also related to the students'language input and output in class. It plays an important role in improving the effect of teaching and language acquisition. In recent years, with the establishment of the new curriculum, students'interest and active participation have been stressed, and the efficiency of classroom teaching has drawn more and more attention. There exists great difference between the secondary education and higher education. A study of teacher feedback in the junior middle school will shed new light on teacher talk in the secondary education setting.It is a critical period for students to learn and get exposed to English when they are in secondary schools. Classroom teaching is the major channel for students to learn English. Since teacher talk serves as the main source of language input, the quality of it becomes more important. Students begin to show their interests in learning a foreign language in the middle school period, and to some extent the quality of teachers'feedback will affect students'motivation for learning English. Therefore giving appropriate feedback to learners is of great importance, and a thorough investigation of this subject will be of great value and significance. The research questions in this thesis include: 1. the proportion of English teachers'feedback in the total amount of the classroom discourse; 2. the distribution of different types of feedback used by teachers in class; 3. the students'attitudes and preferences towards each type of feedback; 4. students'response to teachers'feedback in class; 5. the effect of teacher feedback on classroom interaction.In this thesis the author chooses four middle school English teachers as the subjects. Based on quantitative and qualitative analysis, the following conclusions are drawn:1. There are still many problems in current English teachers'verbal feedback in the secondary school. The proportion of teachers'talk is still larger than that of the students. The teachers'verbal feedback accounts for an average of 33.16â„… of the total of teachers'and students'talk.2. The types of teachers'feedback usually used in class are (from the higher frequency to the lower): simple approval, praise and expansion, recast, negotiation of meaning, prompt and explicit correction. Through questionnaire and interview, students'recognition of the six types of feedback (arranged in descending order) are found: praise and expansion, recast, negotiation of meaning, prompt, simple approval and explicit correction. It can be seen from the different orders that the actual use of teachers'verbal feedback does not accord with the students'expectations, so the teacher should pay attention to the attitudes of the students and adopt more reasonable techniques of feedback.3. From another point of view, the feedback can be classified into positive feedback and negative feedback. Students'favored types of positive feedback are: expansion, repetition, comment, prompt and simple praise. Simple praise is the most frequently used type of positive feedback, which indicates that the use of positive feedback in actual class is different from the students'preferences. The most undesired negative feedback type is explicit correction, the use of which will affect students'language output. In order to promote the effect of interaction between teachers and students, students'preferences and attitudes towards positive feedback and negative feedback should be taken into consideration.4. In excellent English teachers'class, the rate of students'response to teacher feedback is higher than that in the novice teachers'class. Through classroom observation, we get the conclusion that it is related to the expansion and prompt used by excellent teachers.5. After the comparison experiment, we get the conclusion that if the teachers enhance the monitoring of their verbal feedback, the quality of which will be improved and so will the interaction among teacher and students.In conclusion, it can be seen that teachers'feedback does not fully comply with the expectations of students, and teachers do not use feedback very well in enhancing the teaching results. The excellent teachers'feedback contributes to the better interaction between teachers and students, promoting more output. This will have some implications for the novice teachers'professional growth and development. It is also feasible to better the novice teachers'feedback strategies and skills by means of training. To improve the efficiency of English teaching in secondary school, it is important to put more efforts to improve the overall English teachers'language quality and proficiency, and what's more, to encourage teachers to reflect on their teaching process, do action research, which will bring a new view of English teaching. |
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