A Study Of Teacher Talk In Senior High School English Classroom Based On SLA Theories

The research on teacher talk is considered one of the most valuable stories in thehistory of educational research. It is the fact that students seldom have opportunities topractice English and communicate in English in real situation after class. Therefore,teacher talk in the class turns out to be a major source of language input for students. Inthe traditional approach to English teaching, most class time is spent with the teacherhimself lecturing and the students watching and listening. In this way, interactionbetween teacher and students has been discouraged and students’ language output cannotbe properly reinforced.In this thesis, the author made a useful attempt in the double features of teacher talkof English classroom in senior high school on the basis of input hypothesis, outputhypothesis and interaction hypothesis. With the conclusions of the research, teacherscould have a clear idea of the characteristics of teacher talk, the existing problems thatoccur in the classroom and the available suggestions that work to improve their teachingskills and enrich their experience.This research tries to study four questions. The first question is “What is the amountof teacher talk in the EFL classrooms, including English talk and Chinese talk?”. Thesecond question is “What is the frequency of display questions and referential questionsused by teachers?”. The third question is “What is the frequency of the three types ofinteractional modification in EFL classroom?”. The last question is “What are the typesof teachers’ feedback and what is the impact on learners’ language acquisition?”.In this study,5teachers and300students from Grade Two in senior high school arechosen as the subjects. The researcher goes to observe the classroom and the wholeprocess is audio-recorded and transcribed to study teacher talk in the EFL classroom.After collecting the data, the researcher gets a written record of certain periods of lessonto analyze the data.Besides, a questionnaire, as a supplementary tool, is designed for the300students toget the information on language learners’ attitude to the English class they have and thecondition of teacher talk.Finally, interviews are carried out with the teachers so as to support the result ofdata analyses.As to the amount of teacher talk, it is concluded that a major proportion of classtime is occupied by teacher talk, ranging from38%to64%. But the proportion has decreased compared with previous studies. Besides, the use of first language by teachershas been reduced as much as they can. It indicates that teachers have tried to leavestudents more time to produce the target language, but still dominating the classroom.Considering the display questions and referential questions, it is proved thatteachers have a prior use of display questions, whose average proportion is62%. But it isobvious to figure out that teachers attempt to put forward more referential questions thanbefore.As far as the frequency of interactional modification, comprehension checks, whoseaverage percentage are61%, are the most frequently applied. It demonstrates thatteachers tend to control the classroom with such one-way communication strategy.When teachers make comments on students, positive feedbacks are mainly appliedto encourage students. But simple and short praise, whose average percentage comes to77%, is preferred by teachers and makes the feedback automatic.