Teacher Talk In EFL Classrooms:A Comparative Case Study Of Novice And Experienced Teachers In Junior High School

Since1970s, the research focus in the field of ESL/EFL language acquisition and teaching has been shifted from teaching methods to learning process. And the years of such exploration has identified a range of factors involved in second language acquisition and learning very worthy of study, such as learning motivation, teacher talk and so on. Among them, the role of teacher talk in the language classroom is especially prominent (Walsh,2011). Such a fact results from the natural and close relationship between classroom discourse and learning and teaching. Scholars who concentrate on classroom discourse research hold that if the relationship between language, interaction and learning is understood, teachers can be helped to improve their teaching (Van Lier,1996; Walshm,2011). Such a consensus not only reveals the deep relationship between classroom discourse and teaching, but also particularly expresses the importance of research on teacher talk for teacher education and development. The literature review suggests that research on teacher talk in China is later than that in western countries, which indicates that the research has its limitations and imperfections. And most of the studies are set in college EFL classrooms while there are a few studies conducted in schools. Against such a background in China, it is necessary to carry out the studies to compare teacher talk of different groups of teachers (e.g. novice and experienced teachers) in schools and the study hopefully provides some suggestions for their professional development thereby.The present study explored teacher talk of two novice teachers and two experienced teachers from the same junior high school by employing the theory of instructional scaffolding. The study is conducted in terms of discourse quantity, teacher questions, interactional modification and teacher feedback by analyzing data both quantitatively and qualitatively. And the qualitative analysis is based on the scaffolding theory. Data analysis and discussion seem to show that (1) there is no significant difference between discourse quantity of two groups of teachers; but the experienced teachers use only the target language while the novice teachers use two languages and the cause of such a difference lies in that the novice teachers is prone to directly tell the students Chinese meanings of some words instead of explaining them in the target language;(2) the experienced teachers raise significantly more questions than the novice counterparts and the cause of such a significant difference is that the participant novice teachers tend to control the number of questions to guarantee their teacher talk time while the counterparts are eager to propose more questions to get students involved in the class; the experienced teachers put forward significantly more display questions than the novice counterparts while there is no significant difference between the number of their referential questions; questions of the experienced teachers reflect the scaffolding functions significantly more effectively than those of the novice counterparts;(3) the novice teachers make significantly more interactional modifications than the experienced counterparts and the possible cause of such a difference is that the novice teachers would like to use more comprehension checks to know their students’ learning while the counterparts can take advantage of various resources to achieve this goal; the novice teachers use significantly more comprehension checks than the experienced counterparts while there is no significant difference between the number of their confirmation checks; interactional modifications of the experienced teachers represent the scaffolding functions significantly more effectively than those of the novice teachers;(4) the experienced teacher offer significantly more feedback than the novice counterparts and the cause of such a difference is that the novice teachers don’t allow feedback to occupy too much time since their first priority is to complete the teaching tasks according to the lesson plans; all the feedback of the experienced teachers is positive feedback while one novice teacher offers some negative feedback; the experienced teacher provide significantly more evaluative feedback than the novice counterparts while there is no significant difference between the amount of their discoursal feedback; negative feedback used by one novice teacher results in her feedback not perfectly reflecting the scaffolding functions while the other three teachers’ feedback can represent the scaffolding functions perfectly and equally.