A Case Study Of Speech Interruptions In Senior High School English Classes

Speech interruption is a common language phenomenon,which has attracted the attention of many scholars.Scholars have carried out research on it from various research perspectives such as linguistics and sociology.This paper studies and analyzes the speech interruption behaviors in three classrooms of the first grade in a senior high school in Zhejiang Province.This paper tries to answer three questions: First,what are the types and distributions of speech interruptions in senior high school English classes? Second,what are the manners and reasons for speech interruptions in senior high school English classes? Third,how do the teachers and students view these speech interruptions?Through the methods of classroom observation,the researcher recorded the conversations in English classes in this senior high school,analyzed the characteristics of the phenomenon of speech interruption characteristics,and found that there are three situations in English class: students interrupting teachers,teachers interrupting students and students interrupting students.Among them,teachers interrupting students takes the most percentage.From the perspective of the motivation of interruptions,teachers’ interruptions to students are mainly non-cooperative interruptions.From the perspective of the positions of interruptions,the interruptions of teachers to students’ turns are mainly concentrated in the front and middle of the turns.From the perspective of the reasons of interruptions,the main reasons for teachers’ speech interruption are to point out students’ mistakes,to maintain classroom order and so on.From the perspective of the manners of interruptions,there are direct speech interruptions,speech interruptions with feedback and so on.A questionnaire survey was conducted to find out the students’ attitude towards speech interruptions in the classroom,and it is found that teachers’ interruptions can affect students’ mental state in class.Through interviews with teachers,this paper attempts to find out teachers’ understanding and attitude towards speech interruptions,and finds that teachers do not have a strong awareness of their own interruptions and do not pay enough attention to students’ oral expression.Therefore,this paper proposes three points on teachers’ speech interruptions.First of all,teachers should improve awareness of their speech interruptions.Teachers should be aware that their interruptions can have positive and negative impacts on students’ psychological state and classroom atmosphere.Secondly,teachers can use speech interruptions to achieve teaching purposes.Speech interruptions not only play a role in maintaining classroom order and correcting students’ mistakes.Teachers can use cooperative speech interruptions to help students complete the turn,so as to help students express in English.Thirdly,teachers should take appropriate manners of speech interruptions.This research has its theoretical significance and practical significance.It can enrich the research results of conversation analysis in English classroom in high school and make up for the deficiency of previous researches related to this field.It can also help teachers have a better understanding of the current situation and characteristics of speech interruptions in the English classes in high school and provide advice for high school English teachers when they interrupt students in class.