Abstract
Teacher talk has a important role in both the classroom teaching organization for teachers and
the students’ language acquisition. Teacher talk is also a significant factor of teaching researches in
classroom. The analysis and study of teacher talk can explore the relationship between teacher talk
and teaching effects. Therefore, the study of teacher talk can help us understand the real situations
to improve the English classroom teaching effect.
Within the framework of qualitative research, this thesis studies the teacher talk in the college
English classroom of in vocational and technical institutions and explores that the different teacher
talk has a great difference on English classroom and English learners. On the theoretical basis of
Krashen’s Comprehensible Input Hypothesis, Swain’s Comprehensible Output Hypothesis and
Long’s Interaction Hypothesis, the Expert, proficient and novice teacher who have freshman
classes and come from Lanzhou University of Arts and Science and 166 students are regarded as
research subjects. The research instruments that are classroom observation and recording,
questionnaire and interview with teachers are used. It can be found that there have some difference
for the expert, proficient and novice teacher on discourse quantity, teacher’s question, international
modification and feedback manners, therefore, some major findings are demonstrated as follow:
First of all, The expert teacher's talk time (TTT) is less than the novice, the proficient talk
time is slightly higher than the expert; while TTLT (teacher target language talk) of the expert
teacher is more than those of the proficient teachers, the novice teacher's is relatively the least
while TNLT (teacher native language talk) of the novice teacher is bitterly the most.
Secondly, the expert teacher always adopt the questioning types of “nominating”, “chorus”
“answering” and “volunteering”; the proficient teacher pays attention to “nominating” and a little
“chorus” and “volunteer”; the novice teacher often ignored students’ interest of “chorus”,
“volunteer” and “teacher-self answer”, and more prefer to choose the questioning types of
“nominating”.
Thirdly, the expert and proficient teacher are trying to use the confirmation checks and
clarification requests in the classroom teaching, the teaching notion of the expert and proficient
teacher is also increasingly changing. Comprehension checks used by the novice teacher are far
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greater than confirmation checks and clarification requests; therefore, comprehension checks are
the main communication strategies with students for the novice teacher.
Finally, the expert, proficient and novice teachers all adopt more simple praise than praise
with comments and praises with repetitions; the expert, proficient and novice teachers don’t point
out the students’ error directly. the expert and proficient teachers adopt more negative feedback of
“guiding to self-repair”, In contrast, the novice teacher is used to give negative feedback of
“turning to another student” when students commit errors in the questions. Therefore, the
appropriate feedback manners should be based on different situations so as to enhance students’
power and ability to learn English.
After the survey and data analysis, there are some implications as follow: (1) Teachers’
concept, role and status should be changed; (2) teacher talk and curriculum design should be paid
great attention so as to improve the quality of teacher talk; (3) teachers should focus on classroom
interaction and stimulate students to participate in classroom activities; (4) teachers should make
timely and appropriate feedbacks.
Key words:
teacher talk
expert teacher
teacher
II
proficient teacher
novice
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
In the language classroom, teacher talk is the medium of teaching, and is the carrier which
can reflect the teaching method and carry out the teaching plan, but also is the learner’s target
language and an important source of the students’ language input. Nunan (1991) pointed out:
“Teacher talk is of great important both in the classroom teaching organization and the students’
language acquisition. This is not only because the ideal teaching effect can be achieved through
perfect organization and use of teacher talk, but also an important language input for the students
as a target language.”
In China, English classroom is mainly place of language acquisition when English is
considered as a foreign language, therefore, In the English classroom; the teacher classroom
language (teacher discourse) is an extremely important source that the students acquire language
input. English teachers’ classroom discourse is directly related to English teaching quality and all
aspects of students’ proficiency in English. In a sense, Hakanson indicated “the quality and
quantity of the teacher talk can affect and even decide whether the classroom teaching is
successful or not”. (Hankinson, 1986). So it is very significant to analyze English teachers’
classroom discourse in the language teaching process. Nowadays, many researchers both at home
and abroad are studying classroom discourse from different perspective, such as the amount of
teacher talk, Teacher’s Questions, feedback manners. It is proved that discourse analysis from
different perspective does help language teachers adjust their teaching methods, emphasizes the
teaching process with a purpose, and thus effectively improves the quality of teaching.
“An analysis on teacher talk” is a new perspective of English teaching study. Nowadays, it is
still at the early stage. Firstly, the more empirical research is primarily aimed at high school
English class or colleges, the fewer English class studies on vocational colleges; therefore, it is not
underestimated to study the significance of the foreign language classroom. In addition, Xu
Xiaozheng (2006) pointed out: “It is extremely surprising that there are fewer and fewer
professional English teachers, less and less time and the number of papers published, fewer and
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fewer words of monographs published to engage in scientific research in vocational and technical
institutions.” Secondly, nowadays, many linguists both at home and abroad have done further
research on the teacher talk, and most of them mainly studied the features and functions of teacher
talk, the teacher’s talking time in class, teacher’s ways of questioning and feedbacks, and how
does teacher talk affect the language output for learners in college, etc. For these reasons, I chose
to regard vocational and technical institution as background of the study. My paper will do a
comparative study on the teacher talk among expert teachers, novice teachers and proficient
teacher in vocational and technical institutions English classroom from four perspectives of the
discourse quantity, teacher’s questions, interactional modification and feedback manners. By
comparing these differences between expert, novice and proficient teachers, this thesis will try to
understand the situation of college English teachers’ classroom discourse, conclude features of
teacher talk in vocational and technical institutions, find the aspects that need to improve and
ultimately promote the language teaching, as well as provide useful references for the expert,
novice and proficient teachers.
1.2 Significance of the Study
As mentioned above, an analysis on teacher talk at home is still at the early stage, the more
and more studies on classroom discourse take middle school, high school and college for
background; relatively few studies are carried out in the context of vocational and technical
institutions; while the less and less comparative study on teacher talk among expert, novice and
proficient teachers are related to college English course in vocational and technical institutions.
Therefore, the significance of this study is to find the common problems and differences of
expert, novice and proficient teachers’ classroom discourse in vocational and technical institutions
by investigating and analyzing college English teacher talk between expert, novice and proficient
teachers in vocational and technical institutions, and thus we are able to get some constructive and
instructive teaching Implications, it can help the teachers improve their own classroom discourse,
focus on their classroom discourse and build their awareness of classroom discourse to improve
the level of college English classroom teaching. This study will begin with a few aspects as
following: the discourse quantity, teacher’s questions, interactional modification and feedback
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manners.
1.3 Structure of the Thesis
This thesis consists of five different chapters, which are shown as following:
Chapter one is the introduction of the whole thesis, which clarifies the present background of
the study, significance of the study, this chapter also presents the framework of the whole thesis.
The second chapter is a literature review, which firstly introduces the definitions of teacher
talk; secondly summarizes the current status of studies on teacher talk at both home and abroad;
thirdly the precious status of studies on teacher talk between expert, novice and proficient teachers;
finally states the theoretical foundations of this studies, based on three great theories of second
language acquisition, such as Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis theory, Long’s
negotiated interaction hypothesis theory and Swain’s comprehensible output hypothesis theory.
The third chapter of this thesis is the methodology, which points out the research design,
research questions, research subjects, and research instruments, data collection and date analysis.
The questionnaire, audio-record, classroom note-taking and interview are introduced as the ways
of data-collecting.
The fourth chapter presents the comparative analysis and discussion between expert, novice
and proficient teachers, which concludes the discourse quantity of teacher talk and students talk,
teacher’s questions, interactional modification and feedback manners.
The fifth chapter is a conclusion of the thesis, which indicates some main finding. After briefly
analyzing limitations in this study, some implications for college English expert, novice and
proficient teachers will be given.
Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Teacher Talk
Discourse analysis studies the language in use and is defined as “the study of the relationship
between language and the context in which it is used” (McCarthy, 1991:5). Discourse analysis has
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played a key role in the study of language. And the classroom discourse is generated discourse
from classroom, including students discourse and teachers discourse. But so far, the most studies
on classroom discourse tend to mainly study discourse produced actually in the classroom. In
other words, the present studies on classroom discourse are actually only a part of classroom
discourse.
From the current status of studies on classroom discourse at home and abroad, the majority of
studies are to explore the usage of foreign language classroom teacher discourse, among them
main with English teachers’ discourse in the classroom is lord. Not only is classroom teachers’
discourse generated discourse by the use of mother tongue, but also including discourse is
produced discourse by the use of foreign language. Therefore, we are not hard to see that the
teachers discourse analysis is a new study perspective in the field of teaching. The western
linguistics began to apply the related theory to in-depth study classroom discourse during the
1970s and 1980s; however, at present, the study of teacher talk in China is still at the early stage.
So it is very necessary to study the definition of teacher talk in detail. In order to understand the
definition and the content of teacher talk, the definition of teacher talk and the function of teacher
talk will be firstly stated; then, the function of the teacher talk will be described in detail, which
includes discourse quantity, teacher’s questions, interactional modification and feedback manners;
afterwards, the current status of studies on teacher talk at both home and abroad and the precious
status of studies on teacher talk between expert, novice and proficient teachers will be summarized;
finally, the theoretical foundations of this studies based on three great theories of second language
acquisition will be elaborated , such as Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis theory, Long’s
negotiated interaction hypothesis theory and Swain’s comprehensible output hypothesis theory.
2.1.1 Definition of Teacher Talk
So far, there are different definitions of teacher talk, and it is not same to the perspective of
definition. As its name “Teacher Talk”, which indicates the teachers’ speeches in the classrooms to
manage, monitor, coordinate the students to acquire knowledge.
And Jack C.Richards (Richards, 1985:471) defined the teacher talk as the language used by
teachers in the teaching process in order to achieve the purpose of communication with students,
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which comes from the “Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics” .
Meanwhile, teachers tend to simplify the language so that it has many features of other foreign
language and the simplified language. Apparently, he had come to define the teacher talk from the
perspective of language variation.
Language linguist Sinclair and Brazil in their 1982 works “Teacher Talk" referred that teacher
talk is defined as language used by teachers to students when the teachers performs the task of
teaching in foreign language teaching process.
American linguist Rod Ellis (1985) considered that teacher discourse here is a particular
language applied from the teachers in the second language classroom, which the language used by
teachers in the context of unnatural.
Allwright (1991:39) indicated that “teacher talk is one of the major ways that the teachers
convey information to learners, and also is one of the primary means of controlling the learners’
behavior”.
For Bernard Spolsky (2000), “teacher talk is a special language, which is a series of special
words (jargon) mark about a particular industry or occupation”.
Nunan (1991:189) pointed that teacher talk is not only a tool that the teachers organize
classroom teaching, but also the major source of the students’ comprehensible input in the English
classroom.
Chinese scholars Ma xiancan (1999: 23-30) localized the definition of teacher talk. He
believed that “teachers discourse refers to speech activities which the teachers transmits the
knowledge to the students and trains intelligence, organizes and manages the students in the
classroom to complete the tasks successfully, also includes little educational speech activities.
Obviously, teacher talk can also be understood a speech activities in the classroom”.
No matter what points to define teacher talk, we can come to a common conclusion, in the
“Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics”, it refers “the teacher talk
as the language used by teachers in the teaching process”.
2.1.2 Function of Teacher Talk
Generally speaking, teacher talk can be divided into two types: The first category refers to the
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language directly related to the task and teaching content and task, including reading the sentence
or paragraph in the text loudly, explain the vocabulary and grammar, and the discourse quantity,
teacher’s questions, interactional modification and feedback manners; The second category refers
to the language used by the teachers, such as greeting, glossary, etc. In other words, the first
category is called a content language by Sinclair and Brazil; and the second category is known as
the interlanguage of classroom management. The thesis will first mainly analyze category of
teacher talk, here, teacher talk focuses on four features: the discourse quantity, teacher’s questions,
interactional modification and feedback manners. Now these four features are detailed as follow:
2.1.2.1 The Discourse Quantity
The discourse quantity refers to the total amount of talking per unit of time. The discourse
quantity is the proportion of the use of language when the teachers are teaching in a natural school
hour (usually 45 minutes). Many scholars in the study has been found that takes a 70%-90%
proportion of classroom time (Wang Yinquan, 1999),In addition to ask a few questions to students,
it mainly takes the teachers more time to explain words and texts. Therefore, the teachers are the
center of the entire classroom activities, lectures still hold a dominant position to the classroom,
and it is still very important strategy for lectures to improve the quality of classroom teaching. In
my thesis, the minutes taken by the teachers in classroom teaching will be firstly figured out in the
90 minutes class (the lectures, questioning and feedback.etc.), then which divided by 90, it can be
seen the percentage of the discourse quantity of the teachers talk. According to this method, the
percentage of the amount of teacher talk in the target language and native language also will be
described. The distribution of discourse quantity is the most effective indicator to test the quality
of language classroom teaching. If proportion of students’ discourse is the greater in the classroom,
the class may be more successful.
2.1.2.2 Teacher’s Questions
Teacher’s questions are divided into forms by foreign linguists as the following: closed
questions (the only answer), open questions (multiple answers), display questions (the teachers
know the answer)) and referential questions (the teachers do not know the answer or the answer is
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uncertain the teachers know the answer). According to different content, it is generally believed
that the teacher’s questions are divided into two types by Tsui(1995), Long & Stato(1983): display
questions and referential questions.
Referential questions here are related that the teachers do not know the answer or the answer
is uncertain, the students can express their views, which have considerably higher degrees of
freedom and need to understand and judge for the students. Such as: the higher levels questions,
view questions, divergent questions, when-typed questions and what-typed questions. Referential
questions can increase the language o learners in the classroom to promote language acquisition.
utput of
Display questions are that the teachers know the answer; students can often be answered with
YES or NO or the answer can be found directly in the text. Display questions are rarely used
outside the classroom environment, it is generally used to practice knowledge points what they
have learned or to help students understand the text. The purpose of display questions is to check
whether students have learned by learning the knowledge.
How teachers can be used these questions properly? There are many related research in the
past few decades. Long & Sato (1983) in their study found that 79 percent of teacher’s question is
a closed question or display question. And Banres (1969) indicated that open questions permit a
lot of possible answers that are extremely rare, while it is very common for closed questions to
have only one acceptable answer. Lynch (1991) summarized “referential (information- seeking)
questions which predominate in NS-NNS conversation outside classrooms (76% of all questions
asked) made up a 14% of questions asked by teachers. This result suggests that, contrary to there
commendations of many writers on second language teaching methodologies, communicative use
of the target language makes up only a minor Part of typical classroom activities.”
Therefore, teachers need provide more opportunities to let students answer referential question
in order to increase the authentic two-way communication. In the course of negotiation and
interaction, students not only can organize their thought and engage in meaningful practice, but
also modify their output and strengthen their language acquisition. Display question is just a oneway flow of interaction which limits the learners the second language acquisition.
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2.1.2.3 Interactional Modification
In the foreign language classroom, the teachers often adjust their classroom discourse to make
students understand the questions greatly, which is also known as interactional modification,
interactional adjustment or meaning negotiation. There are many studies on interactional
modification, such as Varonis and Gass establish the model of interactional modification among
non-native speakers; Oliver explores the model of interactional modification in children's
interactive discourse; Long (1980) summarizes a variety of strategies in the consultation process,
including comprehension check, confirmation check and clarification request.
Long (1983) argues that they often solve the difficulties through interactional adjustments
when native speakers and L2 learners are talking, and he distinguishes the difference of three
types of interactional modification: comprehension check, confirmation check and clarification
request.
(1) Comprehension check. It is required to ask whether the learner or learners have understood
a previous utterance. E.g. Do you understand? Clear? Got it?
(2) Confirmation check. The teachers play the important roles to confirm whether the students
understand the previous utterance, it’s also required to ask whether a student agrees with the
proposition raised by others. E.g. You mean that...?Do you mean…?Are you saying that…?
(3) Clarification request. The speaker makes request for a clarification in order to ask for
further information from the interlocutor or help himself understand the previous utterance. E.g.
Pardon? Excuse me? What do you mean? Can you explain it?
2.1.2.4 Feedback Manners
Teachers’ feedbacks on students’ classroom performance are supposed to be one of the most
commonly conceived classroom functions of target language, which helps to comment students’
answers and their second language speech, and to arouse their incentive to examine their own oral
English and prompt them to interact with each other to improve their language proficiency.
(Chaudron, 1988)
In order to establish a beneficial atmosphere in the classroom, the teachers by feedbacks can
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improve students' motivation to learn. Teachers’ feedbacks can be classified as positive feedback
and negative feedback. Positive feedback refers to teachers’ praise and comments for students’
classroom answers and behaviors, such as simple praise, praise plus comments, praises plus
repetitions, etc. Positive feedback is teacher’s provision of praise such as “good”, “all right” after
the learner gives some responses. Some studies suggest that positive feedback is much more
effective in improving the learner's behavior, compared with negative feedback (Nunan1991; Zhao
Xiaohong, 1998). Positive feedback can inspire and encourage students to produce more language
output.
Negative feedback is that the teachers perform some behaviors to ignore criticism or
correction for students’ classroom answers and behaviors, negative feedback includes three
aspects: 1) ignore the student's answer, the teachers do not praise when the students answered
correctly; 2) Criticism; 3) the teachers eager to correct errors, interrupts the student's answer when
the students made mistakes in voice, grammar, collocation. There are different attitudes toward the
teachers about students’ errors, some teachers surely correct errors, and some teachers turn a blind
eye to gaze at never correct errors. In addition, it is also highly inappropriate for some teachers to
the way of error correction; they often interrupt students’ answer and point out students’ errors in
grammar. Such the way of error correction would have a negative impact on students’ psychology
and directly affect the students' language development.
2.2 Current Status of Studies on Teacher Talk at Home
and Abroad
2.2.1 Teacher Talk Studies Abroad
Studies on teacher talk began in 1970s; Americans linguists Gaies, Henzel, Krashen, Chaudron,
and Richards are those who firstly observed and studied in this field. Therefore, a great deal of
research methods for describing the foreign language classroom sprang up in that period.
Experimental study on “audio-lingual method” and “grammar-translation method” in the language
education field suggested that the effects of practical application of two teaching methods are
basically the same, teaching effectiveness is uncertain. Thus the scholars quickly turned their
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interest in teacher talk (Teacher's talk) in the process of classroom teaching, teacher-student
interaction analysis (Interaction analysis) and discourse analysis. Such as Chaudron(1977), he
analyzed the teachers’ feedback in the classroom.
Early systematic studies on classroom discourse at abroad are supposed to investigate the model
of classroom discourse. Bellack(1966) first proposed a four-step framework for classroom
discourse: structuring; soliciting; responding and reacting. Coulthard and Sinclair (1975) found
that the between teachers and students have a fixed pattern in the English-speaking classroom;
they
summarized
the
“IRF
structure”
in
classroom
talk,
which
refers
to
the
“Initiation-Response-Follow-up”.
Sinclair and Coulthard(1992) used descriptive linguistics approach to analyze discourse
structure, and put forward to description framework of “five rank”, which is composed of five
rank scale system, including lesson, transaction, exchange, move and act. There have a further
influence on later studies on classroom discourse. Many scholars have done empirical studies on
classroom discourse. As the field of L2 acquisition, Ellis (1990), Tsui (1995) did a lot of study on
L2 classroom discourse and made achievements, which include teacher talk, meaning negotiation
between the teachers and students, turn-taking and so on.
Teacher talk is an important aspect of study on classroom discourse. Since 1970s-1980s,
western linguists have begun to study the classroom behavior on teacher talk, teacher’s questions
and so on. Foreign scholars from different perspectives analyze teacher talk in language teaching.
Remirezetal (1986) studied on the amount, function and point of teacher talk; Wesche & Ready
(1985) studied on the speed, pause and syntactic modifications of teacher talk. Many scholars have
done a lot of empirical research on classroom discourse, such as Sinclair & Coulthard (1975),
Coulthard (1977), Pica & Long (1986), Chaudron (1988), Cook (2000), Richardsetal (2000), Hou
Yanfang (2005), etc. But their studies are limited to traditional classroom that is regarded as the
teacher-centered, there are little Communication and interaction between teachers and students
and students and student. Sinclair & Coulthard (1975) found that what some problems in the
classroom are that there has no “information gap” between teachers and students when they are in
dialogue. Most of the problems raised by teachers to students are that the teachers have already
known the answer of the question, the purpose of the teacher’s questions is to inspect whether the
students have mastered the knowledge rather than get information from students. Pica & Long
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(1986) also found that the display questions are far greater than referential questions; confirmation
checks and clarification checks are less than comprehension checks. They concluded that
traditional classroom does not provide many opportunities for learner to communicate using the
target language, In the true sense, it is lack of communication in the classroom and there have little
language output for learners in the classroom, Therefore, which is not conducive to language
acquisition. Since the 1990s, Allwright, Ellis, Nunan, Krashen and more and more linguists started
to advocate a “teacher research”. (Wallace, 2000; Richards, 1998), they studied in detail teacher
talk and teacher behavior in language teaching to try to show the importance of teacher talk on
effective input and classroom interaction, and then emphasized that teacher talk should create a
classroom environment in order to exchange information and express ideas for learners, and guide
students to actively participate in various classroom activities so as to promote language
acquisition by communication and meaning negotiation. However, most studies only conduct in
the target language countries; survey subjects are limited to the native-speaking English teachers.
How to do research on the teacher talk in the speaking-English as L2 countries is still need to be
discussed.
2.2.2 Teacher Talk Studies Home
Over the years, our foreign language studies much more emphasis on psychology and
pedagogy of language acquisition and few less focus on practical classroom process, it is not given
enough attention to the classroom process itself, and systematically study on teacher talk is
lacking greatly. To some extent, we ignore the learning process and the cultivation of the learning
method (Huang Guowen, 2000). On the one hand, whether we should only use the target language
in the classroom teaching is still a hot debate. On the other hand, how much does the teacher talk
really affect the learners’ learning effect still lack further research? In recent years, the main
researches have been focused on the amount and types of the teacher talk, its functions in
language acquisition, Teacher’s Questions, feedback and correcting manners.
There are few studies of teacher talk in China. Domestic research on teacher talk originated
from Zhao Xiaohong. The author conducted a research about teacher talk in the college
classrooms, and published her essay Investigation and Analysis on Teacher Talk in College
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English Reading Class in 1998. Zhao Xiaohong discovered that the quantity and quality of teacher
talk had a great influence on students’ language acquisition. The surprising result that the teacher
talk time takes up 65 to 90 percent of the whole class time reflected the general situation in
domestic classroom teaching.
The turning point of teacher talk research occurred in 1999. Wang Yinquan pointed out that
teacher talk in foreign language classroom teaching plays an important part for the language
output of the learners. Teacher talk in foreign language classroom is different from other subjects.
It is not only a target language which students should learn, but also a kind of teaching medium to
achieve teaching aims. Wang Yinquan formally introduced the research on teacher talk at home,
and some sensitive researchers began to focus on this field. Such as in 2002, Zhou Xing and Zhou
Yun investigated and analyzed the teacher talk in college classroom. “They found that the quality
and quantity of the teacher talk have a great effect on students learning opportunities” (Lan
Weidong, 2004). With the development of empirical study, Zhou Xing and Zhou Yun studied the
teacher talk by comparing and analyzing the quality and quantity of teacher talk, questioning
manners, interactional modification and feedback between the student-centered classroom and the
teacher-centered classroom. Finally, they proved that the former provided more learning
opportunities than the latter. Hu Xuewen (2003) talked about the features and functions of teacher
talk in his article. The author stated the features from the teacher talk speed, pauses, pronunciation,
vocabulary and syntax. Based on the Speech Act Theory, Tang Yanyu and Liu Shaozhong (2003)
did the research on teacher talk in the view of pragmatics. Hu Qingqiu (2004) mainly analyzed the
relationship between teacher’s question and student’s participation in class. Cheng Xiaotang (2010)
pointed out that teacher talk should be authentic, interactive, logical and normative.
Although some guidance and references for the English teachers are provided by these
researches, some systematic investigations and studies on teacher talk are needed. Besides that,
most of these researches are carried out in college, only few are involved in college classroom of
vocational and technical institutions. Therefore, many findings concerning teacher talk in
vocational and technical institutions remains to be done, and many aspects should be further
studied: what are the characteristics of teacher talk in the college English course in vocational and
technical institutions? Whether these characteristics can have a great influence on the learner’s
language acquisition? So we still have a long way to go on to study teacher talk.
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2.3 Precious Status of Studies on Teacher Talk
between Expert, Novice and Proficient Teachers
2.3.1 Definition of Expert, Novice and Proficient Teachers
At different stages of teacher’s development, different scholars have put forward different
views. The famous contemporary American psychologist pointed that “expert teachers are the
teachers who have some teaching expertise.” it is very difficult to define it by a strict standard.
Every expert teacher has their own teaching style. Therefore, it is usually useless for novice and
proficient teachers to exactly imitate behavior of expert teachers. Berliner (1988) initially put
forward to the model of five stages of teachers’ skill development: (1) novice; (2) advanced
beginner; (3) competent teacher; (4) proficient teacher; and (5) expert teacher. On the basis of the
Berliner’s view, we can see that the study on teaching expertise reflect initially on the broader
expertise literature. Sternberg (2003:65) proposed three common characteristics of expert teachers:
First, the expert’s knowledge. Expert teachers often adopt more strategies and knowledge in
teaching, compared with the novice and proficient teachers, they can be more effective use their
knowledge to solve problems; Second, efficiency. Expert teachers spend less time to do more
work than the novice and proficient teachers; Third, creative insight. Expert teachers are able to
create new and appropriate way to solve problems than the novice and proficient teachers. These
opinions provide us direction and basis to understand T1s, in practice study, we often adopt the
three bases presented by Leinbart and Brandt (cited in Allwright1984:156):
⑴ using test scores. If the score of students are among the top 15 to 20 percent in a certain
geographical area, the teacher is viewed as an expert teacher;
⑵ the authority of the subjective evaluation. Researchers list some features of expert teachers,
and then hand over the leadership to discuss, accordingly they proposed expert teachers;
⑶ teaching years. It refers to teachers’ working age.
At home, Lian Rong(2004) from college of education science and technology of Fujian
Normal University firstly investigated the psychological characteristics of expert, novice and
proficient teachers. He defined expert, novice and proficient teachers from related theories of
15
teacher development. In considering seniority, job title and teaching performance of cases, He
argued that novice teachers are those young teachers whose seniority is in 0-5 years between, job
title is below three-grade titles (including three-grade titles); expert teachers are those whose
seniority is more than 15 years with the special-grade and senior title in the professional post,
while expert teachers with rich experience and good response in teaching are recommended and
evaluated by school leaders and experts; proficient teachers are those who are in the former and
the latter between and participate in young and middle-aged backbone teacher training class or
foreign visiting, seniority is in 6-14 years between with advanced teaching philosophy. In this
paper, as a research perspective of view, we can understand the differences of expert, novice and
proficient teachers' classroom discourse.
2.3.2 Comparative Status of Studies and Results on Teacher
Talk between Experts, Novice and Proficient Teachers
Since 1970s, the studies on the teacher development have increasingly become a very
important research field. The comparative study between expert, novice and proficient teachers
becomes the most famous one. Many researchers at home and abroad have done research on this
comparative study in different professional fields, like applied linguistics, psychology, curriculum
and teaching methodology, etc.
Berliner (1988) initially put forward to the model of five stages of teachers’ skill development:
(1) novice; (2) advanced beginner; (3) competent teacher; (4) proficient teacher; and (5) expert
teacher. On the basis of the Berliner’s view, we can see that the study on teaching expertise reflect
initially on the broader expertise literature. Palmer (2005) identified criteria used to classify the
expert and novice teachers as the following categories: (a) years of experience, (b) social
recognition, (c) professional or social group membership, and (d) performance based criteria
(including normative and criterion-based selection). He further proposed the following two-gate
identification procedure:
First Gate: Screening
Teachers should have: (a) three to five years of experience in a specific teaching content area
and with a particular population of students, and (b) teacher knowledge as reflected in relevant
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certification and degrees that correspond to the field in which these teachers are currently
teaching.
Second Gate: Performance Indicators
Recognition as an exemplary teacher by: (a) multiple constituencies, for example, fellow
teachers, researchers, administrators, teacher educators, based on recent and relevant indicators of
teaching effectiveness to include teacher knowledge and skills, and (b) should be confirmed with
documented evidence of teacher impact on student performance. (Excerpted from Qi Zhiwen,
2008)
At home, Lian Rong(2004) from college of education science and technology of Fujian
Normal University firstly investigated the psychological characteristics of expert, novice and
proficient teachers. He defined expert, novice and proficient teachers from related theories of
teacher development. some researchers make a comparison and analysis between expert, novice
and proficient teachers on teaching behaviors, teaching strategies, teaching efficacy, teacher
cognition the monitoring abilities and psychological features of teaching (Meng Pan, Hu Kezu,
2012). The results show that expert teachers tend to do better than proficient and novice teachers if
the study focuses on the aspects of teaching strategies, achievement goal orientation and
personality traits. Novice teachers are significantly less than expert teachers in the profession
commitment and job burnout. The task target level of novice teachers is significantly lower than
proficient teacher, but there is no difference in the performance goal. From the classroom behavior
and performance, Professor Yu Guoliang(2003) from Beijing Normal University indicated that
there are significant differences in teaching efficacy between expert teachers and novice teachers.
The personal teaching efficacy of expert teachers is greatly higher than novice teachers. The
general education efficacy of expert teachers is greatly lower than the novice. Expert teachers are
more confident in teaching ability than novice teachers, for novice teachers, expert teachers
usually have a more positive attitude in teaching. Professor Hu Zhijian from Liaocheng University
found that the novice teachers lack teaching experience, in addition to, it is also very hard for
novice teachers to use flexible teaching methods and form their own teaching styles, so that they
can’t grasp the teaching difficulties and key points accurately. Therefore, they are more concerned
about their own course content and teaching methods; and less focus on students’ different
reactions and learning activities. (Cited by Wang Yanjie).
17
At abroad, comparative studies between expert, proficient and novice teachers mainly focus on
the comparison in knowledge structure, problem solving, teaching behaviors, interactional
modification and feedback manners, etc. The scholar Shullman from American (1987) concluded
that “compared with novice teachers, expert and proficient teachers have broader knowledge,
more insightful and easier to solve problems.” Sternberg (2003:65) proposed that three common
characteristics of expert teachers: First, the expert’s knowledge. Expert teachers often adopt more
strategies and knowledge in teaching, compared with the novice and proficient teachers, they can
be more effective use their knowledge to solve problems; Second, efficiency. Expert teachers
spend less time to do more work than the novice and proficient teachers; Third, creative insight.
Expert teachers are able to create new and appropriate way to solve problems than the novice and
proficient teachers. In terms of knowledge structure, Livingston and Borko (1989) believed that
expert teachers have more extensive knowledge, more insightful and higher efficiency to solve the
problem. Teachers are not prepared when students put forward to the questions, these three kinds
of teachers will show significant difference in dealing with this emergency situation. Expert
teachers can quickly and flexibly find ways to have teaching contents. However, novice teachers
are contrary, it is relatively more difficult for them, because student responses not only lack
coherence, native teachers but also do not finish the teaching task successfully while students put
forward to the questions teachers have not prepared. Proficient teachers’ performance is in the
former and the latter between. In the comparison of problem solving, Carter (1988) elaborated in
his essay Expert-Novice Differences in Perceiving and Processing Visual Classroom Information
that expert teachers are good at finding the problems and analyzing the situation than proficient
teachers and novice teachers. Gagne (1993), Livingston, Borko and Westerman (1991) pointed out
that compared with proficient and novice teachers, expert teachers’ teaching behaviors are usually
better if teaching plans, teaching procedures and after-class evaluation are only considered. In the
after-class evaluation, Livingston and Borko (1989) declared that expert teachers’ evaluation pays
more attention to the students, they are particularly concerned to the students’ learning effect,
while the novice teachers regard themselves as classroom center, they more consider whether their
teaching is effective or not. Proficient teachers’ performance is in the former and the latter
between.
In summary, firstly we can make a conclusion that there are a great number of comparative
18
studies focused on the psychology point of view between the expert teachers and novice teachers.
However, it is very pity that there have scarcely comparative studies on expert teachers and
proficient teachers, proficient teachers and novice teachers or expert, proficient and novice
teachers; Secondly, although most researches at home and abroad have achieved great success and
provided some guidance for the development of teachers, especially for the novice teachers and
proficient teachers, most of these studies are descriptive and theoretical ones, and lack detailed
and in-depth empirical studies, especially comparative studies on expert, proficient and novice
teachers in classroom discourse. In view of this, it is very significant for the three types of teachers
to do a further observation and research to provide specific assistance for the development of
teachers from the starting point.
2.4 Theoretical Foundations
The author will state the theoretical foundations of this study, based on three great theories of
second language acquisition, such as Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis theory, Long’s
negotiated interaction hypothesis theory and Swain’s comprehensible output hypothesis theory.
2.4.1 Krashen’s Theory of Comprehensible Input Hypothesis
The discussion in this chapter would not be complete without an examination of Stephen
Krashen(1982; 1985) and his Comprehensible Input Hypothesis(or “i+1” theory) , and a theory
built upon the interlanguage studies. Krashen firstly put forward to Comprehensible Input
Hypothesis in 1982 to explain how the acquisition is generated. Many researchers all agree that
Input Hypothesis is the most important theory in L2 acquisition. Krashen’s Comprehensible Input
Hypothesis is the core of “Monitor Model” proposed by Stephen Krashen. Krashen’s theory is in
fact made up of a set of five interrelated hypotheses: Acquisition-learning Hypothesis, Natural
Order Hypothesis, Monitor Hypothesis, Input Hypothesis and Affective Filter Hypothesis.
According to Krashen (1985), The Input Hypothesis attempts to explain how the learner acquires a
second language. In other words, this hypothesis is Krashen's explanation of how second language
acquisition takes place. So the Input hypothesis is only concerned with “acquisition”, not
“learning”.
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The theory claims that there is the inter language knowledge in the Comprehensible Input
Hypothesis, which consists of two parts, the learned and acquired systems. Instruction, i.e.,
classroom teaching, feeds into the learned system through learning, and input feeds into the
acquired system through learning, and input feeds into the acquired system through acquisition.
When output is being made, the learned system is activated to monitor the process.
Input Hypothesis is the core of Krashen’s theory, better known nowadays as the
Comprehensible Input Hypothesis, which claims that L2 acquisition takes place when learners are
exposed to comprehensible input, i.e., input whose content is comprehensible to them but whose
linguistic forms are slightly in advance of their current level of ability, “slightly” meaning one step
above their proficiency. If a learner is at stage i, the input conducive to acquisition should contain i
+ 1. If the input is at the level of i + 1, Krashen claims that learner can understand most of the
language but are still challenged to make progress. If the input is at a higher or lower level (e.g., i
+ 2 or i + 0), in contrast, no acquisition will take place. (Notice that to any experienced
schoolteacher, there is nothing new here, only that in the actual classroom, it is difficult to
determine the “i”or to measure the “1”, a difficulty the theory does not help overcome.) To
Kranshen, L2 development is a matter of quantitative accumulation: the more comprehensible
input one receives, the greater progress one makes in acquisition. Therefore, Krashen suggests that
natural communicative input is the key to designing a syllabus, ensuring in this way that each
learner will receive some “i + 1” input that is appropriate for his/her current stage of linguistic
competence.
Input Hypothesis will be analyzed in details in the following part. According to Krashen, there
are four features in the effective Input Hypothesis as following: comprehensible, interesting and
relevant, non-grammatically sequenced and “i+1” (enough inputs).
(1) Comprehensible
It’s necessity for the language acquisition to acquire the comprehensible inputs. If learners
could not understand what they have learned, they can not acquire the knowledge.
(2) Interesting and Relevant
Learners should refine the information initiatively to interest in it which can improve their
learning. Some researches show that interests are related to learners’ basic knowledge. What are
most interested for learners is that they are eager to know what they have learned.
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(3) Non-grammatically sequenced
Language Acquisition should be important to input enough information, Krashen declared that
it is deficient and unnecessary to arrange teaching behavior by the grammatical sequenced, The
most important reason is that learners can automatically acquire the language through plenty of
comprehensible inputs.
(4) “i+ 1” (enough inputs)
the learner improves and progresses along the “natural order” when he/she receives second
language 'input' that is one step beyond his/her current stage of linguistic competence.
As Krashen indicated in his theory of comprehensible input hypothesis, learners should not be
asked to speak too early; in other words, L2 learners should reach certain language level before
they start to use L2, which means that it usually take a long period for foreign language learners to
know a new language and build their own new language structures and their own comprehensible
language input. People are accustomed to call this period as silent period because language
learners always refuse to speak the new language.
Later on, with the further development of the theoretical study, Gregg (1984) combined
Krashen’s theories of production and acquisition into the new one, there are a graph as following
(Figure 2.1):
2.4.2 Swain’s Output Hypothesis
Neither the comprehensible input hypothesis nor the interaction hypothesis places much
importance on the role of output practice in L2 development. Merrill Swain (1995) criticizes
Krashen and Long for their failure to recognize the importance of “comprehensible output” and
21
argues for a comprehensible out hypothesis or simply output hypothesis. Given its importance, the
discussion of this theory merits a separate section, which follows below.
The output hypothesis holds that learners need the opportunity for meaningful use of their
linguistic resources. Swain calls such meaningful use of the target language “pushed language
use.” According to her, the output practice has at least three functions:
(1)
Output encourages hypothesis testing. It provides the opportunity to try out new
language forms and structures as L2 to meet communicative needs; they make experiments with
their language just to see what words and what does not.
(2) Output facilitates the metalinguistic development, i.e., the learning of various rules
about L2 and L2 use. It may encourage learner to discuss explicitly their doubts and questions
about language and, as a result, may assist them in learning from outside experts, learning from
their peers, or working to co-construct knowledge with their peers.
(3) Output contributes to consciousness-raising. It enables learners to “notice a gap between
what they want to say and what they can say, leading them to recognize what they do not know, or
only know partially” (Swain 1995: 125). This point echoes the noticing hypothesis, an important
theory to be discussed.
In the input practice, i.e., listening or reading, Swain argues, learners are engaged in semantic
processing, i.e., making meaning out of text, which does not necessarily lead to the development
of syntactic competence. Only the output practice forces them to move from semantic to syntactic
processing. It forces them to pay attention to the means of expression and to the use of the formal
features that may not be semantically meaningful and, for that matter, may not be noticed by the
learners.
Swain’s argument is based on her observation of the problems with the French immersion
programs in Toronto in the 1980s. These programs were set up to help children meet the bilingual
requirement for civil service positions in Canada. She found, however, that since the only L2
experience of children in these programs was the teacher-fronted classroom, they received much
input but made little output; in assessment, they received high in some skills of interaction but low
in grammar and sociolinguistic traits. Moreover, these students would increasingly avoid using
their second language in peer interactions as they moved into higher primary grade levels. (This is
like some Chinese college English majors who practice oral English with each other only in first
22
two years of college, but not in the third and fourth years. One reason this happens is that they
know they are not expected to make much output in English, whether in speech or in writing.)
Nunan (1978), Strong (1983) and Peck (1985) whose studies advanced argues that it is
greatly help for foreign language learners to product more target language to improve their
language usage level. And Swain’s Comprehensible Output Hypothesis also is proved by these
statements.
According to Swain and other researchers who made the same point, it is one of the most
important factors for foreign language teacher to affect the foreign language teaching. Through
their communication and interaction, foreign language learners can get great more chances to
produce the target language, which will be very beneficial for learners’ language achievements.
However, Swain’s Comprehensible Output Hypothesis ran into some opposition. One may
criticize Swain for having no direct evidence that pushed output promotes L2 learning. Indeed she
herself has not come up with hard, empirical evidence. Still, the output hypothesis occupies an
undeniable place in SLA literature largely because her criticism of the input hypothesis is based on
solid observation.
2.4.3 Long’s Interaction Hypothesis
Michael Long's view is based on conversation observation between the How these inputs
becomes understandable second language learners and native speakers and him. He agreed
Krashen’s view that comprehensible input is a necessary condition for language acquisition, but he
is more concerned about how these inputs becomes comprehensible. Long (1983) proposed the
“interaction hypothesis” to not only confirm the importance of the comprehensible language input
in language acquisition, but also particularly emphasize negotiation of meaning on promoting
language acquisition. Long believed that “two-way communication” is more conducive to
language acquisition than the “one-way communication”. In the "two-way communication",
because when the speaker can not understand the other one, they will have the opportunity to
inform each other, therefore, both them will make sense of negotiation of meaning and interaction
modification to improve the comprehension of language input. Allwright (1984) also believes that
“comprehensible input” must be combined with “interactive” to create favorable conditions for
23
language acquisition.
Input and interaction may facilitate L2 development by providing comprehensible input, i.e.,
input that is at i + 1, one step ahead of the learner’s existing L2. What we see here is: interaction→
i + 1 , or the interaction hypothesis, a theory Michael Long (1985) built on Krashen’s
comprehensible input hypothesis. The new hypothesis can be illustrated by FIGURE 2.2. It is
clear that, if one compares this figure with FIGURE 2.1, which illustrates Krashen’s model, the
only thing new is the addition of an “interaction” component, which leads to input.
FIGURE 2.2
Long’s Interaction Hypothesis
Interaction → Comprehensible Input → Acquisition
Both Krashen and Long hold that SLA (second language acquisition) depends on the
availability of comprehensible input before the learner’s internal processing mechanism can work.
However, while Krashen believes that comprehensible input will happen by itself, Long is more
concerned about the conditions for input that is one stage above the learner’s current level of
proficiency. To put it simple, Long holds that input is made comprehensible as a result of
interactional modification when communication problems arise.
According to Long (1983a, 126-141) indicated that there are three ways to make input
comprehensible listed as following:
1) By means of input simplifications.
2) Through the use of linguistic and extra-linguistic context; and
3) Through modification of the interactional structure of conversation.
According to Long, in an NNS-NS (non-native speaker- native-speaker) encounter, both
parties will experience difficulty in comprehension and expression and will therefore modify the
interaction; particularly, the NS will adjust the speech to a level that is appropriate to the NNS.
Such modifications have two results. On the one hand, it keeps the interaction going and gets
things done; on the other hand, it provides comprehensible input. The more L2 interaction the
learner holes with others (mainly NSs), the more negotiation of meaning will happen and
subsequently the more comprehensible input the learner will receive.
A critique of the interaction hypothesis merits a separate section. This is not because the
24
hypothesis is better than the other three that we have discussed briefly. It is not better, as we will
see. We have to devote a separate section to it merely because of its importance and popularity in
SLA literature.
Chapter Three Methodology
The third chapter of this thesis is the methodology, which points out the research design,
research questions, research subjects, and research instruments, data collection and data analysis.
The questionnaire, audio-record, classroom note-taking and interview are introduced as the ways
of data-collecting.
3.1 Research Design
Nowadays, we consider that the literature review is based on teacher talk, the present study
predominantly plans to investigate and analyze the three teachers' classroom discourse from the
perspective of teachers 'professional development. Therefore, the study mainly focuses on
qualitative study of teachers’ classroom discourse; certainly, there are some qualitative analyses as
well. Levin (2003) indicated that previous studies described that such methods can achieve great
results in the field of general education and can also successfully apply the studies on English
second language and English foreign language and related fields.
This study is a case study about the three teachers of Lanzhou University of Arts and Science.
Case study methodology allows the researcher to gather strong data from multiple sources while
offering the potential of seeing how these varied experiences come and work together over a
specific period of time. Case study offers an entrance through which the reader can cross the
threshold, entering into a dialogue between one's own circumstances and knowledge and the
specific parameters of the case study. (Excerpted from Qi Zhiwen, 2008)
At the same time, the present study is a comparative study as well. While case studies have the
advantage of allowing in-depth analysis of key phenomena that are clearly situated (Donato, 2000),
there is a need to apply the same methodologies to similar or different contexts. There have been a
number of calls in recent years for repeat studies of class-based research (e.g. Van Lier, 1996;
25
Borg, 1998); it is hoped that the procedures used here are replicable to other contexts. It is great
value to conduct a comparative study. (Steve Walsh, 2006).
Just as mentioned above, the present study intends to find out what different types of teacher
talks are in the discourse quantity, teacher’s questions, interactional modification and feedback
manners. There are the three groups of expert, proficient and novice teachers. The reason why
such four aspects are chosen as the research interests is that there is much logic consistency among
them. Detailed statements will be presented in this chapter.
In short, the method of discourse analysis will be stated in this study to investigate and analyze
the different types of teacher talks that are from the three different groups of expert, proficient and
novice teachers, involving in four research interests: discourse quantity, teacher’s questions,
interactional modification and feedback manners. This study make a conclusion as the following
aspects: research questions, research subjects, research instruments, data collection and data
analysis.
3.2 Research Questions
Up until now, an analysis on teacher talk at home is still at the early stage, and the more and
more studies on classroom discourse take middle school, high school and college for background;
relatively few studies are carried out in the context of vocational and technical institutions; while
the less and less comparative study on teacher talk between expert, proficient and novice teachers
are related to college English classroom in vocational and technical institutions. Therefore, this
thesis will take the teacher talk of college English classroom in vocational and technical
institutions as an example.
This study attempts to make a quantitative and qualitative analysis for classroom discourse
between expert, proficient and novice teacher in order to obtain the characteristics and status of
the English classroom discourse between them, and teacher talk impacts on students’ learning in
L2. Meanwhile, this thesis also expects that the comparative study on teacher talk between expert,
proficient and novice teachers are observed, analyzed, found out and summarized some strategies
to improve teacher talk and quality of classroom teaching. This thesis will mainly focus on
collecting and analyzing the characteristics and status of three group teachers as follow and make
26
comparisons in detail. The following four questions are addressed in this thesis:
Research question A:
What is the percentage of teacher talk time (TTT) and student talk time (STT) among expert,
proficient and novice teacher in 90 minutes class? What is the percentage of the amount of teacher
talk in the target language and in native language among expert, proficient and novice teacher in
90 minutes class?
Research question B:
What is the percentage of display questions and referential questions raised in college English
classroom by expert, proficient and novice teachers respectively? What is the percentage of
questioning types of the expert, proficient and novice teachers?
Research question C:
How the three ways of interactional modification are distributed among expert, proficient and
novice teacher?
Research question D:
How the feedback manners (positive feedback and negative feedback) are used among expert,
proficient and novice teacher respectively in college English classroom of vocational and technical
institutions? How the three aspects of positive feedback (simple praise, praise with comments and
praise with repetitions) and the two aspects of negative feedback (turning to another student,
guiding to self-repair) are distributed among expert, proficient and novice teacher?
3.3 Research Subjects
In this thesis, the research subjects are clearly defined to reduce some effects of unrelated
variables as far as possible, and to ensure the reliability and validity of this study. Expert,
proficient and novice teachers who have freshman classes and come from Lanzhou University of
Arts and Science are regarded as research subjects. There are about 166 students in these three
classes randomly selected, and also questionnaire is used to know feedback and suggestions from
students. Teachers’ syllabus brings into correspondence and students use the same textbook.
Teaching material that currently is used New Century English Integrated Course is published by
the Shanghai Foreign Language Press in 2010. Because of involving all aspects of basic learning
27
English, the English teaching material is more integrated, it is very suitable for non-English major
students in vocational and technical institutions. The reason why the author chose three freshman
English teachers as research subjects is from two points: Firstly, first-year students in vocational
and technical institutions do not understand teachers’ curriculum and teaching situation, students
learning is in a natural state, it is to avoidable for the students after they have adapted to
professional learning, which could affect the authenticity of data collection in the questionnaire
survey; Secondly, expect the individual majors, college English course is only opened for one
academic year. Therefore, three freshman English teachers are chosen to have comparative studies
and questionnaire survey for the freshman students. Next the process will be described in detail
how the research subjects are chosen.
This thesis refers to related theories of teacher development proposed by Ph.D. supervisor
Professor Lian Rong of Fujian Normal University to define expert, proficient and novice teachers.
According to seniority, job title and teaching performance of cases, He set a standard to
distinguish among expert, proficient and novice teachers. Detailed criteria have been discussed in
the previous. There is a fact sheet of three groups of teachers as following (Figure: 3-1):
Figure3-1 Three Groups of Teachers Fact Sheet
Educational
Full Name
Sex
Age
Full/Part
Seniority
Job Title
Background
Teaching material
Time
New Century English
Master's
Teacher1
female
42
Associate
Full
professor
time
18
degree
Integrated Course by
Xu Xiaozhen
New Century English
Master's
Teacher2
female
36
Full
10
Lecturer
degree
Integrated Course by
time
Xu Xiaozhen
New Century English
Bachelor
Teacher3
female
30
Teaching
Full
assistant
time
5
degree
Integrated Course by
Xu Xiaozhen
28
3.4 Research Instruments
Allwright and Bailey (1991) indicated that there are always three research instruments adopted
in the classroom-based research, which includes experimental study, action research and
naturalistic inquiry. Experimental study is the one that researchers intervene or control certain
variables to prove some kind of reason causality; Action research declares that the researchers take
certain actions in the classroom to observe systematically, analyze conclusion and effects caused;
naturalistic inquiry states that the researchers observe and study the phenomenon occurring at the
nature condition in the classroom in order to understand and describe the real teaching process
without any intervention.
The purpose of this study is to find the common problems and differences of expert, novice
and proficient teachers’ classroom discourse in vocational and technical institutions by
investigating and analyzing college English teacher talk between expert, novice and proficient
teachers in vocational and technical institutions, this study has no intention to explore any causal
relationship and take any teaching action, therefore, it adopted the naturalistic inquiry, three
research instruments was used in this thesis as follow:
(1) Classroom observation and video recording
Generally speaking, Ellis (1990) believed that the purpose of classroom study is described in
classroom behavior in detail and accurately record the real classroom situation, detailed and
accurate description are based on the understanding and interpretation of what happened in class.
Therefore, this study took note by classroom observation, recorded the teachers’ classroom
discourse by recorder and transcribed into written words after class to collect data.
At the same time, a number of factors that could affect the reliability of the corpus are also
particularly concerned about, such as “observer paradox”. Labov (1972: 113) proposed that “the
observer paradox” is the one that speaking style of the speaker will change, such as lack of real
and natural, when the observer goes into the speech communication. Therefore, it will not inform
teachers and students investigated in advance, the college English classroom is the whole recorded
in Lanzhou University of Arts and science. Three teachers’ teaching schedule before lecture
recording firstly is known in order to making better comparative analysis, then and it did not start
to recording until teachers gave a class. It is 90 minutes per lesson. During the complete recording
29
process, a recorder will be used to ensure the quality of classroom recording. Because teachers and
students investigated were informed in advance, this controlled influence on some unrelated
variables in the lecture recording, meanwhile, the teacher’s lecture was basically in a relatively
natural situation. In order to ensure the integrity of lectures, the recording also should be written in
detail and classroom recording after class should be arranged when the author visited the class if
there was any possibility to compensate for other non-verbal communication behavior actually
appeared in the classroom(such as blackboard-writing, facial expressions of teachers, body
language, students’ responses, etc.), limitations in data collection and unpredictable errors; the last
work was that the classroom recording arranged was transliterated into writing words, and the
recording and writing materials were analyzed statistically.
(2) Questionnaire
It is very possible that this study may have some contingency and one-sidedness, taking into
account the six classes of recording sampling is relatively small, therefore, this study also took
questionnaire survey as complementary research instrument. Expert, proficient and novice
teachers who have freshman classes and come from Lanzhou University of Arts and Science are
regarded as research subjects. There are about 166 students in these three classes randomly
selected, and also questionnaire is used to know feedbacks and suggestions from students.
Students’ questionnaire was based on the famous questionnaire from Zhou Xing, Zhou Yun (2002)
adapted. Questionnaires will be distributed to students after finishing lectures and interviews with
expert, proficient and novice teachers so as to timely adjust the questionnaire topics, options and
questions found during the lectures. Student questionnaire includes fifteen questions (see
Appendix I). Question 1-5 is designed for the amount of teacher talk; question 6-10 is to
understand Teacher’s Questions in the classroom; question 11 and 12 is related to the feedback
manners; question 13 is aimed at interactional modification; last two questions that are seen as a
reference factor when the author analyzed the teacher talk are directed against the role of teachers
and students.
Questionnaire assessed classroom teaching, teacher-student classroom discourse and relevant
situation in order to obtain some more comprehensive, in-depth data and information. During data
analysis, relevant statistics of classroom recording and related data of questionnaire survey were
compared so as to accurately describe the relevant situation of teacher talk and increase the
30
reliability of the findings.
(3) Individual interview
As one of the qualitative research methods, interviews can provide more detailed information
and more reliable data for researchers. The author will have an interview with expert, proficient
and novice college English teachers respectively to further understand the relevant situation of
teacher talk on expert, proficient and novice college English teachers in the teaching process in
vocational and technical institutions, the specific targeted suggestions were given after finishing
this study. The interview was synchronized with the teacher’s questionnaire. Finally, the results of
interviews were performed statistical analysis.
3.5 Data Collection
(1) Data collection through case studies.
The author adopted a combinative way of quantitative and qualitative analysis to investigate
and study for research questions. There are six lessons; it is 90 minutes per lesson. First, the author
attended three teacher's lectures after obtaining their consent, and make lecture notes and
classroom observations. In order to ensure the integrity of lectures, Modal or repeat words
appeared are also recorded in the classroom session except speech feature such as facial
expressions, gestures, etc.; secondly, Expert, proficient and novice teachers who have freshman
classes, questionnaire is handed out to 180 students in their won class to know feedback and
suggestions from students; thirdly, The author will have an interview with expert, proficient and
novice teacher respectively.
(2) Data collection through questionnaires.
In addition, questionnaires from students also were collected data., in order to the limitation of
recording sampling, it was very possible that this study may have some contingency and
one-sidedness, at that moment, questionnaire survey as complementary research instrument was
particularly important. Because different class sizes had different numbers of questionnaire issued,
there are about 160 pieces questionnaires. The details are as follows: there were 54 students in
expect teacher class, 50 pieces valid questionnaires were collected; there were 55 students in
proficient teacher class, 53 pieces valid questionnaires were collected; there were 57 classes in
31
novice teacher class, at last 55 pieces valid questionnaires were collected, therefore, valid
questionnaires was a total of 158 pieces. In addition to the above mentioned, some questions
raised by students had been explained in detail in order to ensure the reliability and validity of
results of the questionnaires survey in the survey process. Students were given 30 minutes to
finish, it can not hand on the questionnaire to the author unless all students finished it if some
students completed questionnaire early, it can avoid affecting other students, so the author had to
wait for all the students to complete and handed back together. After the recovery of the
questionnaire, each questionnaire carefully was checked, it can be found 8 pieces invalid
questionnaires, it was necessary to cast away the 8 pieces invalid questionnaires and calculate the
statistic data to valid questionnaires.
(3) Data collection through interview
The author will have an interview respectively with expert, proficient and novice college
English teachers. First, the author respectively communicated with expert, proficient and novice
teachers, explaining the reason and purpose of the interview with them, after obtaining their
consent, the author consulted with the three teachers about the time and place of the interview to
have an interview respectively with expert, proficient and novice teachers. During the interview
process, the author took notes while also should use a voice recorder for recording in order to
avoid missing the interviews. Here, the recording was regarded as a supplementary note. At the
end of the interview, the author immediately arranged interviews in order to better understand the
ideological background of the interviewees.
3.6 Data Analysis
Firstly, data related to research questions were analyzed in the classroom recording. Such as
analysis of the amount of teacher discourse, the time what was taken in teacher talk was calculated
in 90 minutes per lesson, the percentage of the amount of teacher talk should be counted if divided
by 90 minutes per lesson. the current situation of English classroom discourse quantity between
expert, proficient and novice teachers in Vocational and technical institutions through the above
analysis method can be known. In addition, statistical analysis about the percentage of the amount
of teacher talk in English teaching or in Chinese teaching will be studied. The method was that the
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time used by teacher in English teaching and in Chinese teaching in total amount of teacher talk
divided total amount of teacher talk by the percentage of the amount of teacher talk in English
teaching and in Chinese teaching, which some situations of teachers teaching in English and
Chinese can be learned.
Secondly, the author analyzed data as follow when the author transliterated the recording into
written materials: (1) to add up the total number of questions for three teachers in 90 minutes per
lesson and the amount of display questions and referential questions to analyze; (2) to count
teacher’s questions, e.g. the times of named questions, the times that ask and answer questions by
oneself etc.; (3) to add up the teacher’s feedback and analyze, e.g. praises with repetition and
praises with comments etc.; (4) to count the distribution percentage of interactional modifications
in the total sum and the each times of use of comprehension checks, confirmation checks and
clarification requests.
Thirdly, recording situation of teachers’ interviews and the results of discussion are presented
in tabular form.
Fourthly, the author used SPSS software version 13.0 to have a frequency statistics and
analysis on data of 158 pieces valid questionnaires.
Finally, during the total data analysis, the statistical results of classroom recording and the
relevant data of questionnaires were compared so that the author can more accurately describe the
relevant situation of teacher talk and increase the reliability of the findings.
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