Teacher Talk In International Students’ Classrooms In China

Teaching Chinese as a foreign language is very important for international students to improve their Chinese proficiency and help them understand Chinese culture.Teacher talk,as an important factor of second language classrooms,has a direct impact on students’ language proficiency and the status of classroom interactive activities.Therefore,it is necessary to study teacher talk and classroom activities.Based on interaction analysis,this study uses COLT classroom observation scale to observe and describe the current status of selected teachers’ classroom discourse interactions,summarizes the characteristics of teacher talk and classroom activities,identifies the factors that affect the formation of the characteristics,discovers the problems among them based on the characteristics and the results of questionnaire,and gives reasonable suggestions for the problems found.The results of this study show that:(1)The types of activities in the basic Chinese classroom are more than those in the advanced classroom,and the basic class focuses more on vocabulary and the advanced class focuses more on the text.(2)Classroom activities are mainly organized as whole class activities,and no group activities are organized.(3)Teacher talk is limited by the content of the textbook and focuses on the form of language(grammar,vocabulary and pronunciation).(4)The majority of topics are controlled by the teacher or by the teacher and students,with few opportunities for students to control.Topics are mostly controlled by the teacher and students together in the basic classroom(69%)and mostly by the teacher in the advanced classroom(70%).(5)In the basic classroom,the most common modalities used by students are speaking and writing,and in the advanced classroom,the most common modality used by students is listening.(6)Both classroom materials are dominated by textbook materials;In terms of teacher talk:(1)Teachers in both classes are mainly teaching in Chinese,while English is used partially in the basic classroom.(2)In terms of information gap,most of the given information is unpredictable;the advanced class gives more information than the basic class;and the basic class requests more information than the advanced class.The two teachers request about the same amount of pseudo information(display questions)and genuine information(reference questions)(3)In both classes,teachers give more sustained utterances and the students give more minimal utterances.(4)Utterances in basic classroom are integrated with repetition and comments.Utterances in advanced classroom are mainly integrated with comments and refinements.(5)Most of the discourses are initiated by teachers,with more student-initiated discourses in the advanced classes(24 times)than in the basic classes(1 time).Based on the analysis of the basic characteristics of classroom activities and teacher talk,this study finds that classroom activities and teacher talk are influenced by students’ language ability,online teaching environment,and immersive teaching method.This study also finds that:There are some common problems in teacher talk and classroom activities such as in classroom activities,the lack of group activities,the topics of classroom activities are mostly controlled by the teacher and the activity contents are limited by the textbook;in teacher talk,there are many teacher-led and sustained speeches and few student-led and sustained speeches,and the simple way of integrating the discourses.And based on the aspects of students’ language proficiency,online teaching environment and immersion teaching method,appropriate advice is given on the problems found in classroom activities and teacher talk:paying attention to students’ needs and language skills;making full use of the online teaching environment;and finding a suitable place for the teacher in the immersion classroom.