A Study Of The Application Of Teacher Feedback In Junior High School English Classroom

Teacher feedback,as a significant part of teacher talk,is a critical factor for teachers’ classroom management and for students’ language development.Proper teacher feedback application can be great help to provide input resources for students and improve students’ language output.While improper teacher feedback application may be harmful to students’ enthusiasm for learning and may be not valuable to promote students’ language.Thus,in recent years,increasing attention to the research on teacher feedback has been paid by many scholars at home and abroad.So the purpose of this study is to attract teachers’ attention when they apply teacher feedback and to put forward some suggestions so as to improve junior high school English teachers’ teaching quality.In China,the researches on teacher feedback began in the late 1980’s.Through retrieving the related literature in the past 20 years in China National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI),the author finds that most of the researches on teacher feedback range from university to senior high school,but fewer of them are implemented in junior high schools.Therefore,based on Krashen’s Comprehensible Input Hypothesis,Swain’s Comprehensible Output Hypothesis and Long’s Interaction Hypothesis,the present thesis attempts to discuss current situation of the teacher feedback application in junior high school English classroom.Moreover,the author aims to investigate students’ preferences for the teacher feedback.So the questions this thesis intends to answer are as follows:(1)What are the major types of feedback the English teachers use in the junior high school classroom?(2)What’s the distribution of using different types of teacherfeedback?(3)Which types of feedback do junior high school students prefer the teachers to use?In order to answer these questions,the author undertook an investigation by means of questionnaire and classroom observation.The participants of the study are 3 teachers with 124 students in different grades from a junior high school in Xilinhot.The data was collected by classroom observation assisted with audio-recording for more than 40 days.Besides,the author sent more than 120 questionnaires to students from three grades and analyzed the data using SPSS.According to the data,the findings can be concluded as follows: in this junior high school,English teachers use a variety of teacher feedback in their teaching process.And there are 13 types of feedback employed by teachers in their English classes in total.Teachers use simple praise,elicitation and recast more frequently.But students prefer praise with expansion,elicitation and recast.Based on the research findings,some suggestions for English classroom teaching are summarized.First of all,teachers should fully realize the important role of teacher feedback in promoting students’ learning and the quality of classroom teaching.In the next place,teachers should have some insight into students’ preferences for teacher feedback,and try to meet their needs.In addition,teacher feedback should be targeted and effective.Lastly,English teachers should balance the interaction between teacher and students.