A Study Of English Teacher Talk In Senior High School Based On The SETT Framework

In foreign language teaching,teacher talk is not only a tool that can impart knowledge,organize teaching and manage class,but also is the target language that students need to learn.To most of the English language learners,teacher talk is the main access to English.Therefore,teacher talk plays an important role in the teaching especially in the English teaching.In recent years,although more and more researchers begin to pay attention to and study teacher talk,there are few researchers study teacher talk based on Walsh's Self-Evaluation and Teacher Talk framework,let alone the teacher talk of senior high school English teachers' based on the SETT framework.The writer observes and videotapes 6 senior high school English teachers' reading class in Changge No.1 Senior High School.Each teacher is videotaped for 4classes and each class lasts for 40 minutes.The research material includes the written texts that is transcribed from the videos,the notes taken from the class observation and the interviews with these teachers.It aims to study the status quo of the usage of teacher talk in senior high school English reading classes in terms of the four modes;are there mode switching and mode side sequence in the six teachers' lessons,if there are,how about their frequency;why do teachers use mode switching and mode side sequence and what are the main places where mode switching and mode side sequence occur.The major findings of the research:(1)only few of senior high school English teachers have received professional training on teacher talk.And 50% of them often use managerial mode,systems and skills mode,material mode but seldom use classroom context mode in reading classes while another 50% of them often use classroom context mode besides the other three modes in reading classes;(2)mode switching and mode side sequence have occurred in all of the 6 English teachers' reading classes and their average frequency in a reading class are 25 times and 9.2times respectively,which suggests that both of them especially mode switching often occur in senior high school English reading classes;(3)mode switching occurs where there are time constraints and a deviation from the topic being discussed.Mode side sequence occurs where there are time constraints,topic shifting and interdependence of turns between teacher and learners.Teachers use mode switching to promote the process of a lesson,return into the topic being discussed and make the teacher talk and pedagogical goals converge.And teachers use mode side sequence to promote theprocess of a lesson while making the lesson complete,shift topics and depend on their turns.The study is limited by two factors: one is there are only 6 teachers taking part in this research,and it does not take teachers' individual differences into account;the other is that it only studies one senior high school,therefore,the universality and representativeness of the results need to be further verified.