Chapter One Introduction
1.1Definition and Classification of Teacher Talk
Teacher Talk has been given different definitions by different scholars and researchers athome and abroad in previous studies. Most of them are similar, or there are just some finedistinctions.Teacher Talk refers to the speeches that the teacher uses to speak to students when theteacher undertakes teaching tasks in foreign language teaching (Sinclair & Brazil, 1982).Teacher Talk means teachers address classroom language learners differently from theway they address other kinds of classroom learners. They make adjustments to both languageform and language function in order to facilitate communication (Ellis 1985). Teacher Talk can be called teachers' language (Richard 1986).Teacher Talk, one of the important components of teachers’ behaviors, refers to thespeech that teachers use in English Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms to carry out theteaching tasks and organize classroom activities.Teacher Talk, namely teacher’s professional languages, refers to the totality of languageteachers’ use, which includes teacher’s oral language, written language, in–class language,out-of-class language and the language they use in the whole teaching process.In this research, Teacher Talk refers to oral language used by teachers in the process ofteaching in classroom.
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1.2Objectives of the Study
In the language classroom, English language, as the target language, is “both thevehicle and the object of instruction” (Long, 2005), occupying much of class time. TeacherTalk plays crucial functions in teaching and learning activities of classroom and itsimportance has gained much recognition by previous researches, while functions of TeacherTalk still needs further explorations. Most of previous researches on this subject have beenunder the guidance of Second Language Acquisition theories (SLA) such as Krashen’scomprehensible input hypothesis and affective filter hypothesis, Swain’s comprehensibleoutput hypothesis, etc. These studies are very insufficient, and it needs still further explorationfrom different perspectives.This research, based some English classroom corpuses of middle school, is to adoptstatistics method to reveal distribution situation of Teacher Talk in classroom and analyzetheir pragmatic functions.Firstly, this research observes quantity of Teacher Talk, and censuses their distributionstatus and then unveils the typical characteristics of the present Teacher Talk as well.Secondly, it interprets Teacher Talk from the perspective of pragmatics and makesdetailed discussion and analysis on their functions.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Related Research Abroad
English classroom, where teachers organize students to anticipate all kinds of activitiesto acquire English, as a main place of teaching and learning foreign language, has become ahot spot of language research. Western scholars and researchers moved their eyes toclassroom and have started to observe and study classroom systematically since 1960s. A lotof empirical researches on the EFL classroom and Teacher Talk have been carried out. Theirresearch showed importance of classroom discourse, also made some definitions onclassroom-based research, and summed up some general teaching approaches of helpingstudents acquiring the second foreign languages, and designed methodologies for classroomresearch.Early researchers such as Chaudron and Nunan have explored Teacher Talk inteacher-dominant second language classrooms, and their attentions were paid on functionsand features of Teacher Talk as well as quantity of Teacher Talk. With the growth of interest inSLA, the importance of Teacher Talk is soon recognized and more and more teachers andresearchers launched their research around it.
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2.2 Related Research at Home
In recent years, studies of classroom teaching at home have been catching up withstudies abroad, and research methods are also very similar to the ones abroad. Psychology oflearners of acquiring the second language and teaching methods are concentrated.After reviewing the papers on Teacher Talk published in recent years, it is found thereare some influential study results on Teacher Talk, which provide English teachers andsubsequent researchers some valuable information. In study of Zhao Xiaohong (1998), she found teacher’s talking time accounts for a bigshare in a 45-minute class time up to between 65% and 90% in college classroom accordingto her investigation on eight teachers’ talk, and teachers rarely set aside some time forstudents to express themselves in classroom and students have less opportunities to participateclassroom activities. To some extent, students are like onlookers and teachers are like theperformers. This is a typical characteristic of traditional teacher-dominant classroom. Also,she made detailed statistics on types of Teacher Talk. These results are very useful as areference for late research.Wang Yingquan (1999) pointed out some obvious differences between Teacher Talk inthe foreign language classrooms and Teacher Talk in other classrooms: Apart from normalfunctions, English Teacher Talk is still an important channel of inputting the target languagefor students, and he pointed out importance of Teacher Talk to students’ output.
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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework of the Study ...... 15
3.1 Speech Act Theory ...... 15
3.1.1 A Theory of the Illocutionary Act.... 15
3.1.2 Indirect Speech Act ....... 16
3.2 Face Theory..... 18
3.2.1 The Concept of Face ..... 19
3.2.2 Politeness Strategies ...... 21
Chapter Four Research Design ...... 23
4.1 Subjects of the Study......... 23
4.2 Research Methods ....... 23
4.3 Data Collection...... 24
4.4 Research Questions ..... 24
Chapter Five Result and Discussion .... 27
5.1 Distribution Status of Teacher Talk ..... 27
5.2 Discussion and Analysis.... 28
Chapter Five Result and Discussion
5.1 Distribution Status of Teacher Talk
According to different standards, Teacher Talk can be classified into different types. Forinstance, according to ways of expression, it has different types such as narrative speeches,illustrative speeches, discussion speeches and so on. It can be also pided into oral speechesand written speeches according to forms of teacher language.Teacher Talk is pided into two categories in this study according to their differentfunctions in teaching: The first one is Teacher Talk with auxiliary functions like maintainingdiscipline and organizing teaching in classroom, which don’t involve imparting knowledge,such as greetings, directive, etc; The other one is Teacher Talk with teaching functions, whichis related to imparting knowledge, such as questions, feedbacks, statements, etc. This researchonly concerns about the part of Teacher Talk occurring in teachers-students interaction.
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Conclusion
Various teaching approaches and strategies are adopted by different styles of teachers.The teaching style, to some extent, can reflect the teaching art of a teacher. However, allapproaches and strategies cannot go without Teacher Talk, so Teacher Talk plays especiallyimportant function in teaching and learning activities of language classroom, which affectsnot only the teaching effect but also students’ acquisition on the foreign language.This thesis investigates present status of Teacher Talk in middle school and sums uptypical characteristics of English Teacher Talk as well as analyzing pragmatic functions ofdifferent types of Teacher Talk in English classroom with application of some pragmatictheories, and still provide some feasible strategies of improvement combing the problemsexposed in this research, aiming to enhancing teacher’s awareness of professional languageand help them adjust and standardize their professional speeches as well as improve applyingabilities of pragmatic theories for English teaching.
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Reference (omitted)