| Nowadays the study of classroom interaction (CI) has become a very hot issue at home and abroad because of its' great value to language learning and teaching. However, classroom interaction in China is very frustrating, especially in middle schools. Many scholars have been reasoning the factors of this phenomenon. Learner-centeredness as a humanistic belief was put forward as a key principle to CLT in 1970s (Holec, 1979; Nunan, 1988) . It regards learners as human in learning and lays emphasis on the learning process and learners' participation. So, many researchers (Xie, 2003; Chen, 2005) combine CI with learner-centered (LC). However, literature review shows that very little research has been conducted into real senior high English classrooms, attempting to study current situation of classroom interaction and explore possible factors.Grounded on the theories of humanism and social interaction, this thesis incor(?)orates learner-centeredness with classroom interaction and summarizes the key features, aiming at comparison with the real English classroom interaction observed and exploration of teachers' factors affecting LCCI. Specifically, the research attempts to answer two questions: 1) What are the features of senior English classroom interaction in this study? 2) How do teachers' factors result in these features and affect LCCI?This thesis attempts to gain an in-depth exploration into teachers' factors affecting LCCI, so case study is carefully selected to be employed. The four informants who have different teaching ages, educational backgrounds and life experiences are identified to meet the requirements of the study. One is male, the other three are female. The data was collected from September 2006 to July 2007, including questionnaires, class audio records, structured and semi-structured interviews, teachers' journals and student's e-mail. Brown's (1975) Interaction Analysis System (BIAS) is employed to analyze the features of the classroom interaction observed in this study and deficiencies of these classroom interactions are exposed. Then the framework generated from literature review, including teachers' beliefs, classroom instruction and personal attributes, is used to analyze these deficiencies.The study finds that the students remain passive in senior English classroom interaction and they seldom participate in classroom interaction. The classroom instructions observed are still teacher-centered and key features of classroom interaction were revealed. In light of the results, further study finds that three aspects of teachers' factors affecting LCCI, that is, teachers' implicit beliefs, explicit classroom instruction and integrated personal attributes. These factors interweave with each other to impact on the teachers' classroom interaction decisions and they vary over the teachers' stages of career life cycle. The experienced teachers stick to their conventional beliefs and take advantage of their skills of classroom interaction or personal dispositions to control the classroom while the inexperienced struggle to change their own teaching beliefs within the apprentice system and acquire strategies and skills to reach a high proficiency in exams as a pursuit of "technical interest" (Grundy, 1987).This thesis ventures to provide an alternative perspective of exploring the reasons affecting Senior English LCCI to illuminate teachers' belief reframement, classroom instruction improvement and personal all-round dispositions promotion. It can also give some enlightenment for teacher training and development. Further improvement in terms of research methods and data analysis is needed in future studies. |
