The Importance Of Teacher Talk In Language Classroom

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A major proportion of class time is taken up by teachers talking in front of the classroom(Nunan & Bailey, 2009). No matter what teaching strategies or methods a teacher uses, it is necessary to give directions, explain activities and check students’ understanding (Richards & Schimdt, 1985). This clearly emphasizes the importance of teacher talk in language classrooms. Walsh (2011) claimed that teacher talk is more important in language classroom than any other classroom since in this context the language being used by teacher is not only the means of acquiring new knowledge; it is also the goal of the study.
Walsh (2011) also claims that in language classrooms, teachers control patterns of communication, they are able to interrupt whenever they like, take the floor, hand over a …show more content…

Enrich counted numbers of speech acts that are utterances and parts of utterances with distinct meanings (ibid). Chaudron (1988) reports that a proportion for teacher talk similar to Enright’s was observed in a comparison between one sixth grade of French immersion class and one core grade French class in Canada by Bialystok, Frohlich and Howard (1978). In this study the number of teachers and students moves was counted. The results indicated that 68.8% of the moves were the moves of French immersion teacher, and 61.3% were the moves of the core French teacher.Although Chaudron (1988) review on TTT and STT was comprehensive, but Ellis (2008) reports that after that studies which investigate and review the amount of teacher talk and student talk in language classrooms have been rare. While,the amount of teacher talk has a crucial impact of learning

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