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This thesis consists of five chapters. The present chapter is the introduction of the whole thesis. Chapter 2 presents a literature review of teacher talk and politeness including the definition and types of teacher talk and the theoretical perspective of the study and also introduces some essays written by scholars both at home and abroad. Chapter 3 gives a detailed analysis in teacher talk, including politeness in instruction, questioning and feedback-giving. Chapter 4 provides the detailed data analysis, problems and suggestions based on an empirical study. Chapter 5, as the conclusion part of the thesis, summarizes the major findings, indicates the limitation of the study and proposes suggestions for future research.
2. Literature Review源'自:751`~论`文'网www.751com.cn
2.1 Teacher Talk
Teacher talk, as the words imply, is the language that teachers use to speak to students in the process of language teaching. We can also call it teacher’s language, teacher’s utterances or teacher’s speech.
Teacher talk can be defined in a broad or narrow way from different perspectives. In the broad sense, teacher talk means the total professional language used by teachers, i.e. teacher’s language, which consists of in-class language, out-class language and language used in other extracurricular activities, such as parents’ meeting. Until the end of the 1980s, focal attention has gradually been paid to the studies of the in-class language, i.e. teacher talk in a narrow definition.
According to Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics, teacher talk is defined as “that variety of language sometimes used by teachers when they are in the process of teaching.”(Xun Lixin, 2012:128)
According to Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics, teacher talk refers to “the term used to describe the register which teachers use in class with learners. It includes the aspects of teacher behaviors such as error correction, simplification, reduction and talking time distribution.” (Xun Lixin, 2012:128)
In this thesis, the narrow definition is adopted, that is to say, the term ‘teacher talk’ refers to the language that teachers use to organize and manage the classroom teaching, instruct the text content and conduct classroom activities, make two-way communication with students as well as evaluate the learning behavior of students. It has such features as amount of teacher talk, type of teacher talk, modifications of teacher talk, teacher instructions, teacher questions and teacher feedback. More specifically, this thesis mainly aims to discuss teacher talk in junior English class in terms of instructions, questions and feedback.
As to the types of teacher talk, different scholars hold different views. Tsui pides teacher talk into the following parts: explaining text or grammar, questioning and feedback on learners’ response (Wang Xiaojing & Zhu Xueyan, 2011:17).
According to some Chinese researchers, teacher talk can be sorted into four varieties: the class management language, instructional language, interactional language and feedback (Lin Ruchang, 1996: 24).
According to Sinclair & Brazil, teacher talk can be primarily classified into two types including content language (CL) and medium language (ML) (Fan Chaoqiu & Zhang Xuan, 2005: 33). The former refers to the language teachers use to impart English knowledge or that of the teaching tasks arranged in textbooks. The latter is made up of two categories: explanatory medium language (EML) and coordinative medium language (CML). EML refers to the language used by teachers to paraphrase words or sentences of texts, to illustrate grammar, and to provide text-related information while CML refers to the language for class organization and management, which covers greetings, revisions, question delivery, comments, task switching, discipline regulation, homework and so on.