A Comparative Study Of Teacher Talk Between English Expert Teachers And Novice Teachers In Senior High Schools

Teacher talk is not only a tool of organizing classroom activities and implementing teaching plans,but also the major resource of comprehensible target language input for students in the EFL(English as a Foreign Language)classroom.Some scholars claim that whether a class is successful or not depends to a large degree on the effectiveness of teacher talk,which makes it necessary to study the teacher talk.However,on one hand,previous studies indicate that most of them are conducted in the stage of higher education and only a few researches can be found in senior high school,although there are about half a million English teachers and 20 million English learners in senior high schools in China and the number is increasing year by year.On the other hand,comparative studies of teacher talk between expert teachers and novice teachers in senior high school have not been given enough consideration.In light of these problems,the author makes a comparative study of teacher talk between expert teachers and novice teachers in senior high school.Based on second language acquisition theory including Krashen's Input Hypothesis,Swain's Output Hypothesis and Long's Interaction Hypothesis,the thesis is intended to find out the differences between fifteen expert teachers and fifteen novice teaches from the four dimensions including the teacher talk quantity,teacher questioning,interactive adjustment and teacher feedback adopted by the methods of classroom observation,audio-recording and interview.The results are as follows:(1)In terms of teacher talk quantity,compared with novice teachers,expert teachers have less classroom discourse and can provide more time for students to communicate.What's more,they can better balance the time of teacher talk,student talk and other non-verbal activities.(2)In terms of teacher questioning,expert teachers and novice teachers tend to ask more referential questions than display questions,but the number of referential questions are used more than that of novice teachers.As for ways of answering teachers' questions,more students in classes of expert teachers are willing to answer questions voluntarily and the classroom atmosphere is harmonious and active,while novice teachers usually have to nominate students to answer the questions or even answer the questions by themselves in order to save time.(3)In terms of interactive adjustment,expert teachers are more skilled in using the method of clarification request to promote students' further discourse output and promote the interaction between teachers and students,while novice teachers are more willing to use the way of understanding checks to confirm whether students understand the teachers' discourse,so as to check if the students get the meaning of teachers to ensure the smooth progress of the classroom.(4)In terms of teacher feedback,both kinds of teachers tend to use positive feedback,however,expert teachers are better at using specific feedback,which means,in addition to the simple positive feedback,expert teachers tend to evaluate students' performance or ask more question to promote the further language of students.However,novice teachers are prone to use the simple positive feedback such as “good” and “excellent”,which cannot make contribution to students' language learning.This study provides some feasible references for first-line teachers,especially for novice teachers,which can not only improve their teacher talk efficiency but also promote their professional development.