A Study Of Teacher Talk Analysis Of Foreign Teachers In English Class

Teacher talk refers to the language that teacher uses in classroom teaching.The research about teacher talk dated from 1970 s.In recent years,more and more linguists and researchers in China and abroad pay much attention to it because they find that teacher talk has great influence on language teaching and learning.Teacher talk is very important for its organization of the classroom activities and its function as a medium to facilitate the processes of students’ learning.What is more,it is the main source of comprehensive target language input that the learner is likely to receive in the foreign language classroom.With the increasing development of educational globalization,more and more foreign teachers are flocking to China and become the indispensable part of the English teachers team in Chinese universities.Therefore,it is necessary to investigate and analyze the teacher talk of foreign teachers in English class.The research is based on Krashen’s Comprehensible Input Hypothesis,Swain’s Output Hypothesis and Long’s Interaction Hypothesis.The author adopts qualitative approach,classroom observation,audio-recordings and interviews to conduct this study,which refers to the study of teacher talk of four foreign English teachers from the College of International Culture and Education of Guangxi Normal University.This study aims to explore the following four issues:(1)How are the distribution of turn-taking between foreign English teachers and students in classroom interaction?(2)What is the amount of foreign English teachers talk in classroom teaching?(3)How’s the frequency of display questions and referential questions in foreign English teachers’ class?(4)What are the main feedback ways for foreign English teachers to respond to students?Based on qualitative analysis of historical data,the results are summarized as follows:(1)With regard to the distribution of turn-taking,teachers are likely to hold more turns in classroom teaching.(2)As to the amount of teacher talk,the research indicates that there is a preference of teacher talk over student talk.(3)In terms of the frequency of display questions and referential questions,display questions are reported as being used more frequently than referential questions.(4)Concerning the teacher’s feedback,the research demonstrates that all teachers prefer positive feedback to negative feedback.