A Case Study on College English Classroom Discourse

Abstract

Classroom discourse analysis is an aspect of classroom process research. It helps us understand how teachers use a language in classroom. Based on the data of discourse collected from English classroom in Three Gorges University in China, this paper attempts to reveal the features of discourse in College English classroom. The paper describes and analyzes the data from the aspects of the amount of teacher talk, the structures of classroom discourse and the questions of teacher. It finds out some features in the present College English classrooms, they are: teacher talk far exceeds students talk; IRF pattern dominates classroom discourse structure, and larger amount of displayed questions On the basis of data analysis, the author offers some tentative suggestions for English teachers to courage students to talk more in class.