The Research On Teachers’ Speech Modification Strategies On Thinking Qualities

The new English curriculum standard proposes that cultivating students’ thinking qualities is an important part of developing students’ core competencies.As the guide to develop students’ abilities,teachers’ every word and deed will affect the students.In the classroom,teachers and students interact with each other through the discourse.Therefore,teachers’ speech as a language input plays a vital role in the development of students’ capabilities.More importantly,in order to better achieve the teaching goals,teachers need to modify their own words through observation,judgment and reaction in the classroom,then build scaffolds for students,and gradually strengthen students’ thinking qualities.Based on the thinking qualities,this research analyzes the application of teachers’ speech modification in the English reading classes of each grade of the junior high school and its impact on students’ thinking qualities.So the author raises three research questions here: 1.What types of modification strategies are used by teachers and what factors can influence the application of these strategies? 2.What is the current state of students’ thinking qualities? 3.From the synchronic and diachronic perspectives,how do the teachers’ speech modification strategies influence the students’ thinking qualities?Therefore,in order to answer the above questions,first of all,in this research,six reading classes of the junior high school were recorded by the video and teachers’ speech modification strategies in the classroom were analyzed and classified.Then,according to the results of interviews of teachers and students,some factors that affect the application of teachers’ speech modification strategies were listed.Secondly,through the questionnaires survey,the current state of students’ thinking qualities is drawn.Lastly,based on Bloom’s teaching objectives in the cognitive domain,from a synchronic perspective,the influence of modification strategies on students’ thinking qualities during the interaction between teachers and students was measured.Then,through the comparison of students’ reading scores before and after the experiment and the results of the questionnaire survey on the tendency of thinking qualities,the changes of students’ thinking qualities were observed diachronically.Through explorations and analysis,this research has reached the following three conclusions: 1.Teacher has adopted several important speech modification strategies including comprehension checks,confirmation checks,repetition,clarification request,reformulation,turn-completion,back-tracking and so on.In addition,teachers in lower grades tend to use repeat as a speech modification strategy,while teachers in higher grades often use the strategy of clarification request.Generally speaking,especially the lower-grade teachers,their behaviors of using such modification strategies are not enough.As for the influential factors,different teaching styles,students’ language levels and teaching materials will also affect the application of teachers’ speech modification strategies to a certain extent.2.Students’ thinking qualities especially in the logicality and criticalness are at the relatively lower level and remains to be improved 3.At the synchronic level,the teachers’ modification strategies especially the clarification requests and reformulation can promote students’ deeper thinking of the problem.And at the diachronic level,compared with the controlled group,the experimental group’s English reading scores have improved significantly.This also shows the positive impact of clarification request and reformulation strategies on the logicality,criticalness and creativity of their thinking.However,teachers’ speech modification strategies still have many problems: teachers use speech modification strategies only to complete the teaching goals,and the frequency of modification is not insufficient,which does not really offer more chances to develop students’ abilities;teachers’ language proficiency is not excellent enough,which leads to the lack of the depth of modification strategies,so the quality of speech modification remains to be improved.The conclusions of this research provide profound significance for the modification of teachers’ speech in junior high school.Teachers should consciously apply various modification strategies especially the clarification request and reformulation,increase the frequency of speech modification by setting up a learning scaffold for students to promote students’ thinking,and then promote their language outputs.