1.2 Research Purpose and Significance

Keller (1987) once said that the practice with feedback was “one of the most powerful components in the learning process”. Effective teacher’s feedback can greatly motivate students to learn and guide them to learn more efficiently. Therefore, it is crucial to study how to make teachers’ feedback effective in language teaching and learning.

The first and foremost aim of this thesis is to analysis the feature of pre-service teachers’ and experienced teachers’ verbal feedback based on the data collected through video observation of  the six teachers. All of the pre-service teachers (marked T1, T2 and T3) were interns in three different classes in Grade 7 of Hangzhou Lv Chen Yu Hua Middle School from Hangzhou Normal University. All of the experienced teachers (marked T4, T5 and T6) were advisors of three pre-service teachers in Hangzhou Lv Chen Yu Hua Middle School). The second aim is to find the differences between experienced and pre-service teachers in junior middle school. The last purpose of this thesis is to give some suggestions for pre-service teachers to make their feedback more effective in their coming pedagogical career.

The significance of the research lies in three facts: the importance of teacher’s feedback in students’ English learning; what kind of teachers’ feedback is effective and appropriate cannot be easily find without actual research; the former study on teacher’s feedback giving suggestions seldom used the perspective of comparison between pre-service and experienced teachers in junior middle school.

1.3 Structure of the Thesis

This dissertation includes five chapters all together. Chapter One is a brief introduction of the whole paper. It is composed of the research background, purpose and significance of the study, and the thesis layout.

Chapter Two is mainly about literature review of researches on teacher talk, teacher feedback and comparative studies on experienced and pre-service teacher. 

Chapter Three is to give an overview of the methodology employed in the present study, which includes research questions, participants, and instruments.

Chapter Four is the central part of this dissertation. It presents a detailed discussion and illustration of the findings. It enumerates the differences of experienced and pre-service English teacher’s feedback in terms of functions, content and presentation mode.

Chapter Five is the pedagogical implications and recommendations for future research. It attempts to provide some suggestions for pre-service teacher to improve their feedback ability.

 2. Literature Review

2.1 Researches on Teacher Talk in China and Abroad

In the 1950s and 60s, researchers observed English class and did research systematically on teacher talk in class (West 1955; Moskowitz 1968). From then on, researchers did many researches on teacher talk employing different ways of analysis from different perspective. Also, many researchers did research about teacher talk in different aspects. Chaudron (1977) analyzed teacher’s verbal feedback and Long (1988) analyzed teacher’s classroom questioning. Long (1983), Long & Sato (1983) and Chaudron (1983) also analyzed the types of teaching language.

Through these researches, the relationship between teacher talk and students’ language output is increasingly noticed by researchers. Flanders (1970) put forward that teacher employed different verbal behaviors can lead to students’ different performance in classroom. And Cameron (2001) similarly thought that it is not teaching but teacher talk which influences how successful children are in acquiring foreign language ability. Obviously, the teacher is responsible for the majority of the responsibility of children’s success in language learning, because teacher’s verbal behavior serves as a role model for students (Nunan, 1991).