A Comparative Study Of The Classroom Instruction Directives Between Intern Teachers And In-service Teachers In Senior High Schools Based On The Speech Act Theory

Teacher’s classroom instructional directives are speech acts used by teachers to get their students to do things in class.It is a kind of language which is used to explain the related contents and related operating procedures before the classroom activities.As an important part of teacher talk,the classroom instructional directive is of great significance to the teaching of second language.Whether giving effective instructional directives,is believed to affect students’ task comprehension and performance.Therefore,the study will compare classroom instructional directives between in-service teachers and intern teachers,which will improve the quality of English teaching in senior high schools and also have merits in students’ English language acquisition.However,there is not enough attention in the empirical research of classroom instructional directives in China,in particular,a comparative study of the classroom instruction directives between in-service teachers and intern teachers in senior high schools is rare.In this study,the author attempts to conduct a small scale comparative study in a senior high school,analyzing the characteristics and differences of classroom instructional directives among three in-service English teachers and three intern English teachers.Through questionnaire,data analysis,interviews and classroom observation,the author analyzes the data from the following aspects: the phonetic features of classroom instructional directives,lexical features,sentence features,discourse features,speech act characteristics and language functions based on speech act theory,comprehensible input theory and intermediary theory.The findings of the study indicate that there are obvious differences in terms of the phonetic features of classroom instructional directives,lexical features,sentence features,discourse features,speech act characteristics and language functions between in-service English teachers and intern English teachers.Firstly,the vocabulary of classroom instructional directives of in-service English teachers is more suitable for the learners’ learning characteristics.Secondly,the planning and comprehensibility of classroom instructional directives of in-service English teachers are better than internEnglish teachers.Thirdly,the forms of classroom instructional directives of in-service English teachers are richer than intern English teachers.But intern English teachers pay more attention to students’ emotional and psychological demands than the in-service teachers.The findings of the study summarize that teachers should use the concise and effective classroom instructional directives and play the mediating role of teachers.And teachers should provide students with the opportunities of comprehensible input as much as possible,and then teachers promote students’ active participation and successful performances,which make English teaching more effective.At the same time,teachers should constantly regulate classroom instructional directives and enrich form and content of classroom instructional directives in the teaching process,which can improve the learning efficiency of students and promote the completion of teachers’ teaching tasks.The aims of the study are to find out the characteristics of teacher’s classroom instructional directives of in-service English teachers and intern English teachers.Based on these findings,this thesis also poses some suggestions for senior high school English teachers,in the hope improving English teaching efficiency qualities.The thesis also attempts to give some suggestions on the use of directives for intern teachers and demonstrates some ways to help the intern teachers to get experienced in English teaching.