A Study Of Interpersonal Meaning Of Teacher Talk In Outstanding College English Classes

With the advancement of educational reform,classroom has gradually shifted from the traditional “teacher-centered” to the “teacher-led,student-centered” one.The dynamic and diversified teacher-student relationships require more on teachers' language capabilities and organizational competence.So teacher talk is not only an important source of students' comprehensible input,but means and tools for teachers to organize,manage and guide classroom activities.At the same time,it represents teachers' knowledge,beliefs and experience in classroom as well.The teaching effect largely depends on the harmonious interaction between teachers and students.The study aims to explore how the interpersonal meaning is realized through lexical and grammatical means.It also devotes to find out the characteristics of teacher talk and to reveal teacher-student relationships in EFL class.The study intends to cope with the following research questions: 1)How are the interpersonal meanings realized in college English teacher talk in terms of mood,modality and person system?2)What are the characteristics of teacher talk in outstanding EFL classes? 3)What kinds of teacher-student relationships are presented in the teacher talk? Based on Halliday's systemic-functional linguistics,the study analyzes the interpersonal meaning of teacher talk by adopting the qualitative and quantitative methods.The materials are chosen from the grand and first prize winners of the 5th and the 6th National Foreign Language Teaching Contests.The findings are summarized as follows:Firstly,in the choice of mood structures,the declarative is the most frequently used(56.4%)followed by the interrogative,with the imperative,especially the jussive imperatives rarely used.This result indicates that teachers usually take leading positions in teaching process as class organizers and knowledge initiators.Meanwhile,they interact with students actively and encourage them to participate in verbal interactions.Also,downgraders are always added to main clauses to mitigate the imposition of teachers.Secondly,in terms of the modal values of teacher talk,the median-low value modal expressions(e.g.will,often,probably,can)are most favored by teachers in the samples,while the high value devices(e.g.must,ought to,always)are prudently or even never adopted by contestants.The frequent selection of median-low value expressions indicates that teachers tend to be sincere and friendly towards students.Interms of orientations of modality,the contestants tend to employ implicit subjective utterances(76%)to make their opinions and feelings more understandable and acceptable.Thirdly,the second person plural pronouns are the most popularly applied followed by the first person plural and singular pronouns,while the the second person singular pronouns are the least occurred.The result indicates that teachers take all students into consideration most of the time when carrying out learning activities,and interact with individuals now and then to mitigate fatigue.The relatively frequent employment of the first person plural and singular pronouns shows that teachers would like to take responsibilities,or to share personal feelings and experiences.In addition,when the contestants employing high value modulation,the subjects are always we or sometimes the second person plural pronoun you instead of the second person singular pronoun you.In sum,teachers' roles and teacher-student relations are dynamic in different lessons.Teacher talk can present teachers knowledgeable and authoritative image;it can take on teachers' benign and peerlike characteristics as well.This study elaborates teachers' multi-roles in EFL class: guide,information provider,classroom organizer,classroom environment creator,instructor,cooperator,facilitator,communicator and so on.Through the analysis of interpersonal meaning of teacher talk,the study helps to enhance teachers' awareness to their classroom discourse and to broaden the vision of input in EFL class.It will benefit to construct effective learning space and harmonious teacher-student relationship to better the effect of classroom teaching.