Classroom discourse in college English teaching of China: a pedagogic or natural mode?

Abstract

The study reported in this article aims to capture the possible changes to the discursive mode of College English (CE) teaching in China by comparing teachers' questions, feedback, and teaching exchanges across two levels of quality courses constructed at different years. Based on transcribed data of 20 videos, it reveals that the general discursive mode of CE teaching was pedagogic; constraints such as sociocultural backgrounds, CE testing system, and factors related to teacher, student, and classroom may account for this mode. Meanwhile, significant differences were found regarding teachers' questioning behaviour and feedback as years elapsed and the course level rose, which may be caused by underlying teachers' beliefs. Implications for Chinese CE teachers and tertiary-level teachers in other Asian English-as-a-foreign-language classrooms are discussed, including the urgency for teachers in teacher-fronted classes to shift their discursive mode from pedagogic to natural to foster students' communicative competence, and suggestions for how to effectuate this shift provided.

Keywords:

• classroom discourse
• College English
• pedagogic mode
• communicative competence

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Prof. Joan Kelly Hall at the Pennsylvania State University for her insightful feedback on an earlier draft of this article. Detailed and constructive comments by the two anonymous reviewers are also much appreciated.

Notes

1. Retrieved from http://jsjpkc.njau.edu.cn:8029/portal/pages, this database was created by Nanjing Agricultural University under the sponsorship of Jiangsu Academic Library and Information System with a view of providing tertiary-level teachers and students with free access to the resources of all the quality courses constructed in Jiangsu province from 2003 to 2010. No ethical issues were involved in this study. When excerpts are presented in the article, teacher names are not given and students are referred to by their surnames to protect their privacy.