A Study On Teacher Talk And EFL Learners' Acquisition In Chinese Middle Schools

Among the various classroom researches, teacher talk and teacher-student classroom interaction have always been the central issue. Teacher talk, the speech made by teachers in classroom, is of crucial importance, not only for the organization of the classroom but also for the processes of L2 acquisition (Nunan 1991). The amount and quality of teacher talk in language classroom has a great effect on classroom teaching and is even a decisive factor of the success or failure of it (Hakansson 1986). By using teacher talk, teachers can plan activities designed to facilitate the learners' acquisition and use the target language. At the same time, the teachers can use the target language as the principal means for giving instructions and directions, modeling target language patterns and giving feedback on student performance.Since teacher talk plays such an important role in language teaching, a great number of scholars (e.g. Chaudron 1983; Gaise 1977, 1979; Henzl 1979; Long 1981, 1983; etc.) have made a lot of empirical researches on it. On the other hand, a large number of researches in SLA have brought to light the significance of"classroom interaction"since the 1980s (e.g. Allwright 1984; Ellis 1990; Long 1983; Swain 1985; etc.). The results obtained from these researches show that teacher talk and classroom interaction have a close relationship to learners' target language acquisition process. However,up to now, researches on teacher talk in Western countries have tended to focus on the features of teacher talk only for language input purposes.In China, the related researches on teacher talk and classroom interaction have begun to catch the attention of a lot of people. However, only a few have been conducted to examine the features of teacher talk and classroom interaction in Chinese context (e.g. Zhao Xiaohong 1998; Wang Yinquan 1999; Zhou&Zhou 2002). Especially, there is little research that empirically explores the impacts of teacher talk on middle school students'English learning proficiency in China. On the other hand, in traditional teacher-centered classroom instruction in middle school in China, there exist three main problems in teacher talk: 1) teachers only concentrate on passing on knowledge to students and little attention is paid to students' needs and reactions to teacher talk; 2) some teachers lack the experience of teaching training, so they do not know how to adjust their talk.3) many teachers usually just focus attention on what they teach while ignore how they should teach studentsSo this thesis attempts to explore the effect that teacher talk has on learners'acquisition in Chinese middle school.First, the author carried out a experiment which lasted the whole semester. Two classes are involved in this experiment. A pretest is carried out before the experiment and after the experiment a posttest is carried out. Also, a questionnaire is used as a subsidiary research tool with the aim to reflect from another perspective what the teacher talk really is. Then, by comparing the results from the two tests, the author draws the conclusion that: proper teacher talk has positive effect on EFL learners'acquisition.The results of the questionnaire also show this point. The findings of this research provide a few implications for EFL teaching in Chinese middle schools i.e. offering more opportunities for learners to produce output encouraging more opportunities for classroom interaction, and creating a more positive atmosphere for learners.Lastly, the author makes conclusions and puts forward some limitations of this research, such as the limited research subjects, the short research time and the incomplete techniques of data-collection.