A Study On Teachers’ Feedback In Middle School English Classroom Based On Face Theory

Teachers’ classroom feedback is an indispensable part of English teaching.It is helpful for promoting the harmonious development of teacher-student relationship and creating an equal and positive classroom atmosphere.Junior high school students are in their period of physiological and psychological self-development.They are eager to be appreciated and praised.The “English Curriculum Standards for Nine-Year Compulsory Education(2001)” proposed that teachers are supposed to attach importance to students’ emotions and create a relaxing,democratic and harmonious classroom atmosphere.In English teaching,teachers’ classroom feedback is a critical factor that affects students’ emotions.This research takes the politeness strategy of Brown & Levinson’s Face theory and Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis as the theoretical basis.This study mainly discusses the use of politeness strategies,finds the differences in the use of politeness strategies between general and expert teachers,explores the influence of teachers’ politeness strategies on students’ learning,and etc..This research regards 4 English teachers and 214 junior high school students from a middle school in Hefei as the research subjects by means of classroom observation,questionnaire and interview,and adopts EXCEL and SPSS21.0 software to analyze the data.The result shows that: English teachers usually take into consideration students’ faces when giving classroom feedback;the teachers’ feedback mainly includes praise,acknowledgement,repetition,request for clarification,inspiration,requests for advice,addition and modification,explicit correction and metalingual feedback.Among them,repetition,praise,acknowledgement and requests for advice are the most frequently used in classroom feedback;most English teachers can use politeness strategies to assist in teaching;there are four politeness strategies in teachers’ classroom feedback.Among them,positive politeness strategy,negative politeness strategy and implicit politeness strategy are of benefit to enhance students’ self-confidences,increase learning interest,and reduce learning anxiety,while outspoken politeness strategy will have a negative effect on learners’ learning emotions;there is a slight difference on the use of politeness strategies between general teachers and expert teachers in classroom feedback.Compared with general teachers,expert teachers frequently use positive politeness strategies in classroom feedback.This research mainly analyzes the use of politeness strategies in the teachers’ classroom feedback and its influences on students’ learning with the aim of providing some enlightenment and suggestions for the majority of junior high school English teachers: strengthen the learning of theoretical knowledge of the feedback;concentrate attention on emotional needs of students;use reasonably politeness strategies in the classroom;provide more opportunities for teachers to learn.Therefore,Combining English teachers’ classroom feedback with politeness strategies is of great significance to the teaching of teachers and the learning of students.