A Constitutive-principles-based Analysis Of Junior High School EFL Teachers' Classroom Discourse

For lack of naturalistic settings of English learning in China,English classroom has naturally become the main venue for students to learn English.Students depend much on the classroom discourse of teachers.In other words,the quality of English teachers' classroom discourse directly affects the students' classroom learning process and results and is therefore worthy of systematic research.Scholars have carried out abundant research on teachers' classroom discourse,but so far there has not been sufficient research on the extent to which the use of junior high school EFL teachers' classroom language meets the constitutive principles of discourse.Oriented to the needs of junior high school EFL teaching practice,and in view of the deficiency of relevant studies,the study takes the seven constitutive principles of discourse proposed by Robert Alain de and Wolfgang Dressler as the theoretical framework and judgment criteria.It employs 3 English teachers and their 158 students in a junior high school in Yantai as participants,takes the observation scale,systematic questionnaire and interview outline as data collection instruments.It makes a systematic exploration of whether junior high school English teachers' use of classroom discourse conforms to the seven constitutive principles of discourse,so as to systematically understand the situation of English teachers' discourse in junior high school.Therefore,it can provide the basis for the improvement and perfection of teachers' classroom discourse.The results show that,among the seven constitutive principles of discourse,the language of junior high school English teachers has reached the standards of coherence,intentionality and informativity,has roughly reached the standards of cohesion,acceptability and situationality,but has not completely reached the standards of intertextuality.The classroom discourse should be considered from the perspective of students' cognition;teachers should pay attention to the logic of language and strengthen the connection of knowledge.This study may hopefully have certain practical and academic significance for junior high school EFL teaching and related research.In terms of its practical significance,the results of this study reveal the current situation of English teachers' classroom discourse in junior high school.Therefore,it can provide a basis for its improvement and perfection.In terms of its academic significance,this study may help to make up for the lack of research of classroom discourse of junior high school EFL teachers.