A Comparative Study Of Teacher Talk Between Expert Teachers And Novice Teachers In English Classroom Of High Schools

Under the current educational system in China, English classroom is the main place wheremost of senior students contact and use English. There are lots of elements to influence the SLAof students in English classroom, including: teaching environment, teaching aims, teachingcontents, teaching atmosphere, teaching procedure, teaching management, teachers’ level,teachers’ personalities, students’ level, students’ state and so on. Among all of these, teacher talkis especially important. In addition, with the development of the research in SLA, classroominteraction has been attached great importance. Teachers are no longer just as deliverers ofknowledge, but also as conductors, coordinators and cooperators. On the one hand, teacher talkis the source of students’ input, on the other hand, teachers should create all kinds ofopportunities similar to daily communication for students to practice English and by doing this,improving their output. Many SLA teachers and scholars have made some researches aboutteacher talk in college, but few of them have done research about teacher talk in high schools.However, high school is one of the most important stages for students’ SLA. In some sense,whether students can grasp the grammar system of English and use English to communicatewith others depends on students’ learning in this stage. Therefore, it’s worth researching teachertalk in high schools.Some scholars both at home and abroad have done several comparative studies on expertteachers and novice teachers. They found there are significant differences in these two types ofteachers, especially in the areas of knowledge, efficiency, and insight. Compared to noviceteachers, expert teachers have abundant professional knowledge, they can finish a lot of workwithin a short period of time, and can use innovative and appropriate way to solve problems.However, few researches have been done on the similarities and differences of expert teachersand novice teachers in their classroom talk, organization and implementation of classroomteaching both at home and abroad.This article attempts to explore the characteristics of these two types of teachers’ classroomtalk through a comparative analysis of expert teachers and novice teachers, and to identifysimilarities and differences in their use of teacher talk and classroom interaction. The purpose isto help the majority of first-line high school English teachers to understand the use of teachertalk in actual classrooms, to explore how to effectively use teacher talk, and how to make it beneficial to the students’ language acquisition.In addition, through expert teachers’ classroom talk analysis, the author finds some waysfor teachers to improve their classroom talk, and gets some implications to improve the qualityof foreign language teaching in high schools.In this thesis, the author analyzed these two kinds of teacher talk from the perspectiveinteractional features. The author analyzed the differences of teacher talk and its effect onstudents’ SLA. The author used recording as the main research method and combined it withobserving, noting and questionnaire to make a research about teacher talk between noviceteachers and expert teachers. The author found there being obvious differences in the amount ofteacher talk and the features of it. Expert teachers’ interactional mode is much more colorfuland abundant than novice teachers’. Expert teachers asked more referential questions. In expertteachers’ classroom, teachers can use their language effectively to inspire the learning interestof students, to increase students’ learning motivation, to modify students’ learning process andto improve both quality and quantity of students’ output. Compared to them, novice teacherscan’t make good use of their talk to improve students’ SLA.Through the analysis of the classroom talk implemented by expert teachers and noviceteachers in high school, this thesis gets the following implications:1) changing concepts,changing the status and role of teachers in the classroom. Teachers should not only impartknowledge, but also should tell students how to learn and how to use the language;2)controlling the amount of teacher talk and creating opportunities for students to practice thetarget language;3) combining display questions and referential questions, increasing theproportion of referential questions. Teachers’ questions, especially referential questions, canmobilize the enthusiasm of the students, and promote students’ language output, they alsoprovide more opportunities for students to think and communicate in the target language;4)using more specific positive feedback and dealing with students’ errors correctly. Positivefeedback from teachers, not only can make the students understand that they have correctlycompleted the task, but also can enable students to improve their self-confidence, stimulatetheir interest in learning, and expand the breadth and depth of their thinking;5)depending onstudents’ situation and the teaching contents, teachers should make good use of all differentinteractional modes.