An Empirical Study on Teacher Talk in the College English Classroom: Based on Excellent Samples of SFLEP National College English Teaching Contest

The study conducts an analysis of excellent college English teachers' classroom discourses in the teaching contest context in terms of the amount of teacher talk and teacher questioning. The results indicate that the amount of teacher talk is prominently higher than that of student talk with instruction accounting for a remarkably unusual percentage; although there is no marked difference in the amount of referential questions and display questions, the referential questions prove not to be facilitative, and teachers prefer to use nominating and self-answer, which consequently leads to the low motivation of students to participate, exerting detrimental influence on both the quantity and quality of language output of the students.