A Research On The Application Of Metalanguage In English Classroom Teaching In Senior Middle School

Metalanguage is defined as the language used to describe and interpret object language by functional linguists. It is essentially different from the tool language in the sense of logic linguistics. It is the im portant descriptive method of linguistic researches and linguists’ ‘Jargon’(Wales,294).With the spread and development of functional linguistics in English Teaching in our country, the im portance of metalanguage has been realiz ed by m ore and m ore teachers. Scholars began to pay more attention to the app lication of metalanguage in teachers’ talk. Com pared to foreign empirical research on classroom metalanguage, domestic research is relatively lagging behind and reflects on the level of English major and College English teaching. From empirical perspective, th is paper starts a research on teachers’ talk in senior middle schools, and trys to an alyze the a pplication conditions and the strategies of metalanguage.This paper probes the current situation of teacher talk of English teaching in senior middle schools and r ealizes the teachers’ and students’ perceptions on metalanguage, then draws a c onclusion on the features an d pragmatic functions of metalanguage used in English classroom s of senior middle schools. Based on this conclusion, this paper centers on the e mpirical study of m etalanguage in English classroom teaching in senior m iddle school. It collects relevant data from classroom observation and survey by ques tionnaire and interviews, and analyzes actual status of metalanguage and discusses the problems and solutions.4 teachers who are teaching in the sa me senior middle school are chosen as the observed and interviewed subjects.And correspondingly, a questionnaire on 258 students is the main study material as aid resource.Then, systematic detailed analysis on the results of classroom observation and the results of student s’ questionnaire are presented. This study proves that metalanguage runs through the process of explaining vocabulary, elaborating gra mmar/syntax,and discussing text.The metalanguage strategies are:English as the main expressive form of metalanguage,while Chinese as auxiliary form; using more declarative sen tences and im perative sentences than interrogative sentences and exclamatory sentences; IRF as the main interaction model in classroom; adapting more display questions and less referential questions.We can make a safe conclusion that m etalanguage is not merely the practice of e mphasizing the application of metalanguage in the process of teaching, but also tectonics and skills to develop comprehensive teaching mode and diversified teaching model, which can be used to cultivate the students’ ability of metalanguage.