A Study On Effectiveness Of Teachers’ Directive Discourse In Senior High School English Classroom

An effective and well-organized English class cannot be achieved without teachers’ verbal directives. Abundant attention should be paid to effective teachers’verbal directives in class, which is significant to optimize teaching effects, facilitate students’ language acquisition and teacher-student interaction etc. Therefore, it is necessary to concentrate on the effectiveness analysis of teachers’verbal directives.Most of previous researches at home and abroad mainly focus on describing general features of teachers’ verbal directives, such as definition of directive, types, principles and functions, etc, while there are few studies on senior high school English teachers’ verbal directives along with students’ expectation. By means of class observation, recording, transcription and questionnaire, this study starts with teachers’ verbal directives in senior high school English classroom and analyzes the current situation of the effectiveness of English teachers’ verbal directives in Middle School Attached to HUST in terms of directive amount, directive forms, directive strategies and problematic directives. And this aims to find out the major problems of teachers’verbal directives and put forward effective ways of giving verbal directives. In addition, this research is taken as an opportunity to strengthen senior high school English teachers’awareness of their verbal directives and their reflection. Therefore they can use verbal directives effectively in class and improve teaching effects. To be specific, the research questions are as follows:1. What’s the current situation of the effectiveness of teachers’ verbal directives in senior high school English classroom?2. What are the major problems of senior high school English teachers’verbal directives?3. For senior high school English teachers, how do they improve the effectiveness of their verbal directives?This study shows:1. English teachers pay attention to the effects of directive amount on students’ effective comprehension and implementation of their verbal directives. They give one directive at once at most cases. Next is issuing two directives closely connected at once. They seldom give excessive directives at the same time to avoid interfering students’ understanding and reception of directives. Teachers apply different directive forms to issue verbal directives. Brief and direct imperative directives are given priority. Euphemistic and enlightening interrogative directives take second place. The function of declarative directives is weak in class. Teachers can use single directive strategy or combined directive strategies based on actual teaching situations. These include self-repetition, translation, exemplification, paraphrase and comprehension check. Comprehension check and self-repetition are the main types, while translation is the least frequently used. There are problematic teachers’ verbal directives in class, of which the frequency is not high, such as the stack of directives, complex syntactical structures, over-general requirements and ambiguous referents etc.2. Teachers’ directive forms are single, which do harm to students’ language acquisition. The applications of exemplification and paraphrase are not so enough, which possess more explanatory power and instructive significance. And there are mechanical repetitions. Problematic teachers’ verbal directives happen frequently, and mainly manifest as redundant directives and ambiguous directives, which affect students’ comprehension and implementation of the directives. The communicative degree of teachers’ verbal directives is not so high and some directives are even mechanical. Students follow teachers’ verbal directives and respond to them through verbal or non-verbal actions, which digress from the purpose of genuine classroom interaction and communication.3. It is necessary for teachers to control their verbal directives reasonably; they can decompose directives when necessary. Teachers can simplify their verbal directives and try to avoid verbal directives with complex syntactic structures. Teachers should be aware of making their verbal directives clear, and define requirements of activities or tasks clearly. Teachers should enrich their directive forms to provide more comprehensible input for students. Teachers need to use different directive strategies flexibly based on particular teaching situations to facilitate students’ comprehension and implementation of teaching tasks.