The Analysis Of Teacher Talk’s Attractiveness In Senior High School English Classroom

Teacher talk is well recognized for its function of organization as well as resources of language input. It mainly includes language used in teaching regulation, knowledge transmission and class interaction. The importance of its study is found in prompting linguistic research and theories of teacher development. William W. Purkey and Betty L. Siegel’s inviting education theory stressed that inviting education contributed to increasing students’ confidence and interest as well as motivating their potential. Teachers as a crucial part in school education deserve much attention in their attractiveness to students. Therefore, studies on teacher talk attractiveness is necessary and of great significance. And the purpose of this study is to put forward a framework for analyzing teacher talk attractiveness in senior high English classroom.By intensive reading and deduction of previous theories and studies, a general framework for analyzing teacher talk attractiveness is formed. The data is transcribed from 8 English lessons of 6 teachers in a senior high school of Changsha, Hunan Province. Naturalistic inquiry is adopted involving classroom recording and interview. After data collection and transcription, the general framework is used to analyze their attractiveness and find their characteristics of senior high English teachers. The interviews with students aim to learn about students’ views on teacher attractiveness and provide references for analysis.Based on Bernstein’s pedagogic discourse classification, the general framework is proposed. It adopts conversational analysis theory and appraisal system as tools for analyzing three parts of regulative discourse, instructional discourse and interactive discourse. Analysis of regulative discourse is carried out from hierarchical relation and expected behaviors, instructional discourse is analyzed from cognitive needs and attitudes towards knowledge, and interactive discourse is discussed from talk turns and its repair as well as teacher feedback. The features of senior high school such as being examination-oriented make its teacher talk attractiveness have its own characteristics. For example, sometimes teachers’authority in regulative discourse may also be appealing to students, teachers’appreciation on knowledge directly influence students’ attitudes and degree of mastery to knowledge, and teachers’negative feedback in interactive discourse may also be attractive if proper methods such as implicitly correcting, postponing correction and eliciting self-correction are adopted to relieve passive effects and achieve the positive results of helping them to be aware of their mistakes and make changes.This study is expected to develop theories of teachers’ verbal attractiveness and raises senior high English teachers’ attention to their talk attractiveness, which aid to increase students’ confidence to and interest in English learning as well as enter a higher school smoothly.