| For most of the high school students in China, English language teaching (ELT) classroom is the main place in which English is involved and used. To some extent, English teacher talk (TT) influences classroom English teaching. First of all, the organization and control of the classroom take place through TT; secondly, TT is not only the medium to achieve the teaching objective but also the main source of language input. Teacher talk is crucial to ELT and it also has great influence on learner output. However, many teachers have not paid enough attention to it. Without the awareness and sensibility of effective TT, most teachers lack competence to adjust their speech consciously. All of these justify analyzing teacher talk in high school English class.The analysis is presented on the basis of Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis, Swain's comprehensible output hypothesis, and Long's interaction hypothesis. In order to identify the distinction of teacher talk in high school English class, four English teachers and their students in Grade One from a high school in Baoji City are chosen as the subjects. This thesis tries to explore and describe the present state of TT in high school English class from the following aspects: (1) the amount of TT; (2) the property of TT (accuracy and fluency, interestedness, language planning and comprehensiveness, the use of mother tongue); (3) teacher's questioning (questioning classification, questioning direction, waiting time); (4) interaction modification; (5) teacher's feedback. The data is collected and analyzed through classroom observation and audio-recording, questionnaire and interview, among which questionnaire is designed for the students while interview is for the teachers.According to the investigation and the detailed date analysis, the author finds that the present state of TT in high school English class are as follows: (1) Teacher talk time is almost between 20 and 30 minutes, which adds up to 44%-70% of 45 minutes. Furthermore, lesson type, teacher's language proficiency and the level of students have great influence on TT and all of them lead in the unsteadiness of the amount of TT. (2) Most English teachers can take students'language level into consideration and use mother tongue properly, pronouncing well, making little grammar mistakes, speaking native-likely. However, to some extent, their TT lacks interestedness and abundance to students. (3)In high school English class, display questions, compared with referential questions, are great favorites with most teachers. Meanwhile, nomination and chorus answering are most teachers'choice. After questioning, most teachers can give students reasonable time to think about according to students'level, class atmosphere, the difficulty level of questions. (4) In order to control class, teachers make full use of comprehension checks in contrast to confirmation checks and clarification checks. However, some teachers still give priority to confirmation checks and clarification checks so as to make communication in class more natural. (5) Most teachers adopt positive feedback to encourage students to express themselves or to perfect their answers by themselves. Moreover, when communicating with students, they can use body language properly. Unfortunately, some teachers'feedback is too general and inflexible.Therefore, the author puts forward the following suggestions on the improvement to TT and English teaching of high school: (1) advocating the learner-centered approach, emphasizing learner autonomy; changing the teacher's role in English language teaching classroom; (2) expanding teachers'knowledge of foreign language teaching methodology and improving their language proficiency; (3) cultivating the awareness of TT, managing and planning the TT; minimizing teacher talk time and maximizing student talk time under the control; (4) making excellent preparation for teaching to enhance the property of TT; (5) questioning appropriately, stimulating students to think actively and enlarging students'language output; (6) encouraging interaction modification in English class and grasping the techniques of interaction modification ; (7) giving the positive feedback properly and timely and making good use of body language. |
