Features Of Teacher-student Verbal Interaction In High-quality Senior High School English Reading Classes

Interaction can be classified into two types,verbal and non-verbal interaction.This study aims to explore the features of teacher-student verbal interaction in high-quality senior high school English classes.The study endeavors to answer the following questions.1.What is the structure of high-quality senior high school English classes?2.What are the specific features of Teacher Talk in high-quality senior high school English classes?3.What are the specific features of Student Talk in high-quality senior high school English classes?The present study selects two top-prize-winning senior high school English classes from the activity "A Teacher,A Quality-class;A Class,An Expert Teacher".It adopts the improved Flanders Interaction Analysis System(abbreviated as iFIAS)to collect the statistics on teacher-student verbal interaction.However,statistical analysis,though revealing,may not be enough to reveal the details of their verbal interaction.Therefore,the study adopts the qualitative interaction analysis to supplement and further explain the statistical findings.Based on results and discussion,the study comes to the following conclusions.First,in the high-quality senior-high-school English classes,students are actively involved in classroom interaction under the proper guidance of teachers(the ratio of Teacher Talk to Student Talk being between 1 and 2);their classes seldom have confusions unhelpful for teaching(average frequency being 8 times)and are generally effective.Second,in the high-quality senior-high-school English classes,some teachers may be balanced in their direct and indirect control over students and some tend to be more indirect.Lecturing(Category 5)and giving directions(Category 6)are two major means of directly influencing students,while praise or encouragement(Category 2)and asking questions(Category 4)are two major means of indirect influence.Asking questions can successfully get response out of students.Teachers ask more closed questions,and they tend to ask questions after praise or encouragement,lecturing,or giving directions,and often repeat or clarify the questions to ensure the effectiveness of their questions.Third,in the high-quality senior-high-school English classes,students frequently interact with classmates and teachers,but they do not initiate response very often and never initiate questions.The study has some possible pedagogical implications.First,the high-quality classes can be good examples for normal classes and teachers can learn from them.Second,in addition to the closed questions and questions on exercises,teachers can try to ask students more open questions.Third,students should be encouraged to respond by their own initiative Fourth,teachers need to develop students’ skills to ask questions by their own initiative.However,the present study is still limited in that only two samples of high-quality classes are chosen for detailed analysis and that it does not include any sample of normal classes either.Future researches can try in these directions.