A Study Of Roles Of Teacher Talk In The College English Classroom

In recent years, teacher talk has been studied extensively and become one of the hot research in the field of Second Language Acquisition. It plays an important role in the second language classroom. With an aim of investigating to what extent verbal interaction between the teacher and student facilitates interaction in the L2classroom, this thesis examines the issue of classroom interaction between L2teachers and students in the college English classroom, by focusing on the roles of teacher talk, with special emphasis on the way L2teachers address students and stimulate their participation in classroom activities. The input hypothesis, interaction theory, the output hypothesis and classroom discourse form the theoretical base of this thesis. Quantitative and qualitative methods are employed in collecting the data and analysing the results.By observing videos of two L2teachers who competed in the first SFLEP National College English Teaching Contest in China in2010, a detailed comparison has been made on their teacher talk and classroom interaction based on the analysis of the transcript of the videos. In addition, a poll survey for the L2teachers and university students is made using questionnaires designed to reveal some of the problems existing in the college English classrooms, pointing to potential improvements. The findings of the present study include:(1) TT is much more prevalent than ST in authentic classroom settings;(2) referential questions are widely believed to help students maximize language output even if they are less frequently asked.(3) For the L2teachers, positive feedback works better in stimulating students, while for students negative feedback is more effective as a means of stimulating interest and response. Students do not wish to be corrected while they are speaking and do not desire the L2teachers give them the right answer directly. They prefer to be guided to the right answer by themselves, instead.(4) Most students would like not to tell the teacher if they do not understand what the teacher says; it is thus important that comprehension needs to be regularly checked in the L2classroom.(5) The mostly used ways of modifying TT include discourse modification and grammatical modification; teachers sometimes use body language, though code-switching is seldom used.(6) Students show little interest in answering teachers’ questions, but they like such classroom activities as role-play, drama, word games, debate, visual-audio materials and group discussion.The analysis of the results of videos and questionnaires revealed that L2teachers should regularly assess the situation in terms of characteristics of learners in the L2classroom, to adjust the kind of questions asked, choose to give learners positive or negative feedback, decide on correcting or not correcting errors, and provide suitable explanations. In addition, teachers should be aware of the need to modify their language in the interests of improving students’ comprehension. Lastly, L2teachers play an important role in developing students’motivation; thus, communicative strategies such as diagnosing the needs of students and offering encouragement should be adopted to improve classroom interaction.