| Along with the development of linguistic theory and psychology theory, and extensively researches on second language acquisition, researches on English teaching in China are undergoing profound changes. Teacher talk and the classroom interaction have gradually become the research focus of researchers in this field. In recent years, the studies on teacher talk and classroom interaction have received great achievements. On the other hand, the research on metalanguage, an important language form of teacher talk, is seldom involved.Metalanguage theory was developed in the field of logic, and then got rapid development in many other fields. Later, linguists borrowed the concept of object language and metalanguage, and began to introduce metalanguage to the research field of linguistics. Metalanguage in linguistics was defined as the tool used to describe and interpret object language by linguists. It is different form the tool language in logic. Linguistic metalanguage is the important descriptive method and linguists’"jargon"(Wales,294). For the changes on teaching philosophy and teaching practice, the importance of metalanguage has been realized. Scholars began to fasten their attentions on the application of metalanguage in teacher talk. Compared with the researches on metalanguage abroad, the research at home is relatively lagging. For this point, this paper is a preliminary analysis of metalanguage in teacher talk. Based on the perspective of empirical research, the application conditions and the strategies of metalanguage in teacher talk are involved.In this paper, general concept of metalanguage as prolusion is discussed by author. Then author defines the concept and research scope of metalanguage in classroom according to author’s comprehension of general concept of metalanguage. Metalanguage in classroom are the language tool and descriptive method to infer to, elaborate, analyze the target language. The main teaching goal of language teaching are elaborating and imparting language knowledge, so the language and teaching method can be seen as metalanguage in classroom. In the basis of vocabulary interpretation, grammatical/syntax explanation and text analysis, this study analyze the application of metalanguage in college English teaching classroom and discuss the strategies of metalanguage which is used in different teaching content form expressive forms, sentences patters, classroom interaction, types of questions.5teachers’ who are teaching in the same college are chosen as the observing subjects. These five English classes are the main study material with120students’ questionnaire as an aid resource. At last, author answer the two research questions in this study by system detailed analysis on the result of classroom observation and the data result of students’ questionnaire. Finally this study sum up the strategies of metalanguage in the process of explain vocabulary, elaborating grammar/syntax, and discussing text. These metalanguage strategies are:English as the main expressive form of metalanguage, while Chinese as auxiliary form; using more declarative sentence and interrogative sentence than imperative sentence and exclamatory sentence; IRF as the main interaction model in classroom; adapting more display questions and less referential questions. |
