A Comparative Study On The Classroom Discourse Of English Teachers In Urban And Rural Junior High School

In recent years,classroom discourse is one of the most important research fields foreign language teaching.Due to the lack of natural and real English language environments in China,classroom has always been the main place for primary and junior high school students to learn English.Nunan(1991)proposed that teachers’ classroom discourse was not only a tool for teachers to implement teaching plans,but also a significant source for students’ language input.Therefore,appropriate teachers’ classroom discourse plays a fundamental role in both teachers’ teaching and students’ English language acquisition.Thus paying attention to and studying English teachers’ classroom discourse help teachers to understand the actual situation of English class teaching and effectively improve the teaching effect of English classroom.This study mainly answers the following questions:(1)What is the percentage of English teachers’ discourse volume in a class(40 minutes)between urban junior high school and rural junior high school?(2)What are the similarities and differences between the authenticity of classroom discourse of urban English teachers and that of rural English teachers?(3)What are the similarities and differences between the interactivity of classroom discourse of urban English teachers and that of rural English teachers?(4)What are the similarities and differences between the logicality of classroom discourse of urban English teachers and that of rural English teachers?(5)What are the similarities and differences between the normalization of classroom discourse of urban English teachers and that of rural English teachers?The research sites were in urban N Middle School and rural H Middle School in Nanning,Guangxi.Three teachers were selected as the research participants in each school.The research adopted classroom observation and interview for data collection.The results of the research shown that:(1)the volume of urban teachers’ discourse is lower than that of rural teachers’ discourse.(2)Rural teachers do not focus on creating situations,but urban teachers can create relatively authentic situation for students.(3)Urban teachers use suggestive discourse to increase the interaction with the students,while rural teachers reduce interaction for saving time.(4)Urban and rural teachers’ discourse both seem to lack logicality and coherence as they use inconsistency of questions and change topics suddenly.(5)Urban and rural teachers sometimes use inappropriate expressions.Based on the research results,this study puts forward some suggestions.First of all,teachers should give students more opportunities to speak and lets students become the main bodies of classroom activities.Next,teachers should create authentic situations for teaching as much as possible.Then,teachers can improve students’ classroom participation through interaction.Later,teachers should improve the logicality of discourse for the convenience of students’ understanding.Finally,teachers should use appropriate expressions.