A Study On Teacher Talk Oriented Higher-Order Thinking In Senior High School English Reading Teaching

The cultivation of students’ higher-order thinking skills is vital for core competences development as Senior High School English Curriculum Standard(2020 version)clearly includes the thinking competence into the core competences of English discipline and requires teachers to guide students’ thinking to develop from lower level to higher level in the design and implementation of English learning activities.As one of the important elements that compose teaching activity design and implementation,Teacher Talk not only plays a key role in classroom teaching organization but also promotes students’ acquisition and cognition development.In the real reading classroom,the average amount of Teacher Talk occupies 65%-90% of total classroom discourse.Thus,Teacher Talk can be taken as a critical driving force to develop students’ higher-order thinking skills.Therefore,this study attempts to discuss the issues concerning Teacher Talk in English reading instruction,based on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and the Zone of Proximal Development,examines the implementation of Teacher Talk to guide the development of students’ higher-order thinking skills,and provides suggestions for optimization on this basis.This study includes three questions: 1)What is teachers’ understanding of Teacher Talk for higher-order thinking skills development? 2)What are the major types of Teacher Talk used for in cultivating students’ higher-order thinking skills? 3)How do teachers effectively cultivate students’ higher-order thinking skills via specific Teacher Talk? To address these three research questions,this study adopts quantitative and qualitative methods,including the questionnaire,interview,and classroom observation,to investigate four teachers’ understanding of higher-order thinking skills development,and to observe and study teachers’ actual practice in real classroom teaching.Tools used are SPSS26 and Capcut to conduct analysis.The results of the study show that teachers have some awareness and understanding of Teacher Talk and the use of Teacher Talk,but their understanding of the hierarchy of higher-order thinking skills is relatively inaccurate,and their awareness of using Teacher Talk to develop students’ higher-order thinking skills need to be improved;the percentage of important types of Teacher Talk involving the development of higher-order thinking skills,such as feedback,questioning,and directive words,is relatively low;however,teachers’ practice of feedback,questioning,and directive words to develop students’ higher-order thinking skills provide some approaches worthy of reference in actual teaching practice.Based on an in-depth survey of real classroom teaching and with a problem-oriented approach,this study suggests that teachers should deepen their understanding of different higher-order thinking skills;increase the proportion of feedback,questioning and directive words;reduce simple repetitive feedback and increase elaboration feedback appropriately;improve the quality and proportion of analysis,evaluation and creation questioning;increase the proportion of directive words that stimulate analysis,evaluation and creation of students,hoping to provide more reflections and references for the research and practice in this area.