A Research On The Employment Of Politeness Strategies For Teacher Talk In Senior High School Classroom

Teacher talk plays a vitally important part in the process of classroom interaction and successful instruction within senior high English teaching,particularly for Chinese students who are able to obtain efficient language input from teacher talk,one of the significant components of students' language acquisition.It is of great importance to use language communication in English classroom teaching,however,the employment of politeness strategies should not be ignored as well.As a crucial principle in daily language interaction,politeness strategies attract a large amount of attention in English classrooms.Most of the researchers at home regard college or high school English teachers as their research objectives,while seldom pay attention to senior high school English teachers,which is just the reason why this paper focuses on the employment of politeness strategies for teacher talk in senior high school classroom.And this thesis tends to answer the following questions:(1)What is the overall situation of senior high school English teachers in employing politeness strategies of teacher talk in classroom?(2)What are the differences between male and female teachers when employing politeness strategies in English classroom?(3)What kind of emotional influence it may have on students when senior high school teachers employ politeness strategies in classroom?Three kinds of research methods are adopted to investigate and analyze the employment of politeness strategies for senior high school teachers in English teaching classroom.They are questionnaires,classroom observation and student interview.Four dimensions are included in Questionnaire of Politeness Strategies for Teacher Talk in Senior High School English Class,they are greeting students,giving orders,asking questions and providing evaluation or feedback.Fifty-six English teachers from four senior high schools of Yunnan province are involved as the questionnaire subjects and one of the schools is randomly selected as classroom observation subject.As for classroom observation,the whole process of the four teachers is recorded by a recorder,and the author takes some notes at the same time,in order to observe their specific employment of politeness strategies in teacher talk.The result of the classroom observation is considered to be the supplement of the questionnaire mentioned above.One girl and one boy of the very four teachers are randomly chosen to have an interview after class,so as to consult the emotional influence on the politeness strategies of teacher talk makes.Three results are found throughout the present study,they are:(1)The employment of politeness strategies on teacher talk for senior high school English teachers remains in a relative high level,and they can use such politeness strategies quite well in class;(2)Generally speaking,there are no significant differences between female and male teachers in the employment of classroom politeness strategies,however,several differences do exist in the dimensions of asking questions and providing evaluation or feedback,namely female teachers prefer to use euphemistic expressions,while male teachers direct ones;(3)Appropriate employment of politeness strategies on teacher talk for senior high school English teachers can arouse students' learning interest,promote their learning motivation,enhance their confidence,strengthen their learning enthusiasm,reduce their learning anxiety,as well as help to establish their politeness awareness.Based on the research results above,some feasible suggestions are put forward both to senior high English teachers and senior high schools.As for the former,they are supposed to:(1)pay attention to theory learning on politeness strategies of teacher talk;(2)appropriately employ politeness strategies of teacher talk during the instruction;(3)conduct more communication between female and male teachers;(4)communicate with students to focus on their feelings and suggestions.As for the latter one,two kinds of actions are encouraged to take,namely provide more opportunities for senior high teachers on politeness strategies learning and hold some related activities to enhance their ability in this sphere.