Teacher Talk and Learner's Proficiency

النوع : Article

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between teacher talk (TT) in the classroom and learner’s success. To do this, the author observed an English class audio-recorded over a period of eight months, during which thirty four hours of classroom interaction were obtained. Also, the learner’s scores on an English proficiency test at the end of the year were collected. Some categories of TT directed to individual learners were then correlated with the learner’s scores on the test. The results showed that among the four categories of the TT listed in the study, only teacher “elicit” and “praise” were found to correlate with the learners’ success. This indicates that (1) the teacher always tended to praise more proficient learners, and (2) the teacher tended to call on more proficient learners, or elicited learners achieved better progress.