A Contrastive Study On Attitude Resources In Teacher Talk Of Novice And Proficient English Teachers In Junior Middle School

As the main medium of classroom communication,teacher talk has attracted great attention from scholars at home and abroad.In the process of classroom communication,interpersonal meaning in teacher talk has played a significant role in constructing and maintaining the teacher-student relationship.There are many studies on teacher talk,such as teacher questioning,teacher feedback and teacher instruction.However,it seldom involves the influence of interpersonal meaning in teacher talk on teacher-student relationship and teaching efficiency.Therefore,this study focuses on exploring the different distributions of Attitude resources between novice and proficient English teachers’ talk and the reasons for the differences,aiming at providing some references for novice teachers to use Attitude resources to close teacher-student relationship,promote classroom interaction and improve teaching efficiency.Based on the Appraisal theory,this study adopts qualitative and quantitative methods to transcribe the teacher talk of 24 reading classes of two novice and two proficient English teachers in H Junior Middle School of Zhejiang Province.Through classroom observation and discourse analysis,this paper compares and analyzes the different distributions of Attitude resources in the two groups of teachers’ talk,and discusses the reasons for their different distributions.This study intends to explore the following questions:(1)What is the overall distribution of Attitude resource in teachers’ talk between novice and proficient English teachers?(2)What are the similarities and differences of three sub-systems of Attitude resource,namely Affect,Judgement and Appreciation distributed in the two groups of English teachers’ talk?(3)What are the possible factors that cause the different distributions of Attitude resources in the two groups of English teachers’ talk?The research findings are as follows:(1)There are abundant Attitude resources in two groups of English teachers’ talk including Affect,Judgement and Appreciation.However,Attitude resources of proficient teachers are 14.61% higher than those of novice ones.Besides,both teachers often use positive Attitude resources instead of negative ones to evaluate the students in teaching.(2)The sub-systems of Attitude resources in the two groups of teachers have the same distribution characteristic,with the most Appreciation,followed by Judgement and Affect.However,in terms of the frequency,the two groups of teachers show different characteristics.Firstly,theproficient teachers have 1.96% bigger Affect resources than those of novice ones,which shows that proficient teachers are better at using Affect resources,especially Un/happiness and Dis/inclination to close the teacher-student’s distance;Secondly,the proficient teachers have 4% larger Judgement resources than those of novice ones,which expresses that proficient teachers focus on using Judgement resources,in particular,Capacity and Propriety to evaluate students’ abilities and moralities;Thirdly,the novice teachers have 5.95% higher Appreciation resources than those of proficient ones,which indicates that novice teachers prefer to use Appreciation resources,especially Reaction to evaluate students’ classroom performance.(3)Through classroom observation and teacher interviews,the possible reasons causing the differences are as follows: Firstly,teachers’ evaluation awareness is different.The proficient teachers focus more on evaluating the students,and their evaluation awareness is relatively high;Secondly,teachers’ teaching focuses are different.The proficient teachers insist on student-centered idea,and they pay more attention to the students;Thirdly,teachers’ evaluation dimensions are different.The proficient teachers pay more attention to cultivating the students’ emotions and values,and their evaluations are more diversified.According to the research findings,this study puts forward the following suggestions for teachers:(1)Novice teachers should improve their evaluation awareness on students and use more positive Attitude resources to build a good teacher-student relationship;(2)Novice teachers should insist student-centered teaching idea and employ more Judgement resources to cultivate students’ correct values;(3)Novice teachers should increase familiarity with textbooks and students and apply more Affect resources to close the distance with students;(4)Both teachers should improve self-reflection ability and reasonably use Affect,Judgement and Appreciation resources to evaluate students comprehensively.