Research On Teacher’s Directives In English Reading Classes In A Junior High School In Xiamen

Teacher’s directive is a part of teacher’s discourse,which plays an important role in English teaching.The research on teachers’ classroom instructional speech acts is important.Because these instructional speech acts are not only the source of students’ input,but also the basis of having effective classroom activities.They also affect the classroom atmosphere and students’ learning enthusiasm.In China,students mainly learn English in English class and to some extent,students’ participation in English classes can show if they learn well.This research is a study on teacher’s directives and students’ classroom participation in reading class in junior high school,hoping to improve the current research related to directives from a micro perspective.Therefore,the purpose of this thesis is to study the characteristics of teachers’ directives and the factors that affect teachers’ directives in reading class,and to analyze the influence of these characteristics on students’ participation,so as to provide advice for English teachers’ teaching.So this study raises the following four research questions: First,what are the characteristics of teacher’s directives in reading lessons given by in-service teachers with different experiences? What are the differences of these characteristics? Second,what are the favorable or unfavorable effects of the characteristics of these teacher’s directives on students’ classroom participation? Third,will students’ comprehension of teacher’s directives and emotional engagement affect students’ behavioral engagement in reading classes? If they do,then what are the effects? Fourth,from the perspective of teachers,what are the factors that affect the characteristics of teacher’s directives? Are these factors consistent with students’ expectations and needs for reading classroom imperatives? What are the similarities and differences between the principles of using teacher’s directives and students’ needs?This study selects six classes of a junior high school and the corresponding three teachers as the research subjects,then uses observation of lectures,questionnaires,and interviews to collect data on teachers’ intonation,vocabulary and sentence patterns of directives,students’ classroom participation,principles of using directives and students’ needs.After that,this study uses softwares called Praat,Excel,and Spss to analyze the data.The following results are obtained: First,in-service teachers with different experiences have the same characteristics of directives in reading lessons,such as simple words and sentence patterns,mainly falling tones,and low frequency of stress,and there are also differences.Second,getting the characteristics of classroom directives,such as reasonable uses of stress,reasonable changes in intonation,slowing down the speed of speech,short pauses,reducing repetition,reducing Chinese explanations,and adopting politeness strategies will promote students’ classroom participation.Third,the three dimensions of students’ classroom participation affect each other.Fourth,students’ demand for directives basically corresponds to teachers’ principles of using directives.