An Interactive Analysis On Classroom Discourse In College Eglish Classes

English classroom teaching is in fact an interactive process between teachers and students, so the analysis of classroom interaction has attracted high attention of linguists and educators both at home and abroad. In the past, the researches of English classroom mainly concentrated on teachers’ aspect, such as teachers’ questions and feedbacks, but largely ignored the interaction between teachers and students. Researches on discourse structure of classroom interaction between teachers and students, types of discourse interaction patterns and the probing of effective interaction patterns, have not yet been attached enough importance so that studies in these fields remain less.Classroom process research is also known as the classroom interaction and communication research. Guided by Flanders Interaction Analysis System (also called classroom verbal behavior interaction analysis proposed by American educator Ned. Flanders), this paper studies on the current situation of college English classroom interaction through the way of naturalistic observation. Three non-English major classes in Central South University are selected as the observation objects. This study tries to obtain insights from the observation results and explore effective interaction patterns so as to better reflect on the contemporary English teaching process. Several constructive advices have been put forward for college English teachers in order to better achieve the teaching goal.This thesis has analyzed the discourse interaction patterns with reference to the Sinclair and Coulthand’s classroom discourse analysis theory. The author has investigated the transcribed data in the light of discourse structure of classroom, direct and indirect influence of teacher to students, classroom atmosphere and discourse patterns. Based on the data analysis and discussion, the following conclusions can be drawn: teachers prefer direct influence to indirect influence to students in college English teaching; the focus of interaction in college English class shifting, reference problems being more conducive to stimulate deep classroom interaction than indicative ones. Beyond that, this research has summarized three kinds of interaction patterns--IRFR,IR(IR)F,IRF(RF), which can better promote classroom interaction than the Birmingham pattern. Finally, through researching findings and analysis, some problems existing in college English classroom interaction are revealed, such as the random of classroom interaction and the formalization of classroom interaction. A number of reflective opinions have been put forward accordingly.This research has not only enriched and developed the theory study of foreign language classroom discourse analysis, but also has certain actual application value in teaching field. The author has just carried on a tentative study of college English classroom interaction, so there are inevitable deficiencies on the aspects of research methods, data collection and analysis. For related studies in this field, the author hopes that the collection of corpus should be more representative; quantitative and qualitative analysis should be combined more closely and scientifically; the analysis process should be more objective and more fully. Only in this way, will the analysis be more convincing and effective.