A Case Study Of Teacher Feedback In Senior English Classroom Interaction

There is a long history for teacher feedback which is very important in language teaching and learning. Teachers can encourage and help students to take part in classroom communication by feedback. At the same time students can obtain opportunities to improve learning from answering questions. In classroom interaction activities, students can better understand the teaching materials with the help of teacher feedback and their mistakes can also be corrected by teacher feedback. Proper feedbacks can make students more interested in study, but unsuitable ones may make students lose heart. As a result, it is very important to do some studies on teacher feedback.Although there have been plenty of studies on teacher feedback abroad, little has been done in China. Besides Chinese researches on classroom feedback are mainly focused on the college classroom interaction(Zhao Xiaohong,1998; Zhou Xing and Zhou Yun,2002; Sun Huifang and Zhang Ping,2005). Therefore, it is necessary to do some research in Senior English classroom interaction. So this thesis will explore the features of Senior English teachers’classroom feedback and its effects on classroom interaction through classroom observation and recording, interviews as well as questionnaires, trying to find some suggestions and implications_for teachers to improve their feedback.The study will choose one Senior English teacher and their112Senior One students from a Senior high School in Tongxiang as its subjects. Through classroom observation and recording we will analyze the classifications, the time of teacher feedback as well as the time of classroom interaction. In order to know students’ expectations and needs from teacher feedback, the author will give questionnaires to the students and eight of them were interviewed to make up for the questionnaire.Through comparing the time of feedback and interaction, we can find that the influence of teacher feedback on language learning and teaching is obvious and positive feedback can make the classroom interaction going smoothly. Meanwhile, based on the observation of the classroom, it is reported that the teacher could employ several feedback techniques in the classroom teaching. But the simple approval is the most frequent one used in interaction and its percentage is much higher than the other feedback techniques. From the private interview with the students and the questionnaire, we should point out that the students want the teacher to give them positive feedback which can stimulate them to open their mouth and take part in the activities actively. However simple approval is not enough for the students to know more about the question and their answers, and they want the teacher to give further explanations and more detailed comments on their answers. Therefore, there is a gap between the application of teacher feedback and the students’ hopes, which requires the teacher to adjust their feedback techniques.