[摘要] 这篇论文主要由四个部分组成。第一部分阐述了对课堂师生交流的理解，其中涉及当前师生交流的现状，及其存在的主要问题。第二部分描述了对中学六节课的课堂观察记录，主要是对师生在课堂中的沟通的观察记录，发现一个普遍现象：每位教师在课堂中都是机械的讲述，学生都在被动地听课，课堂气氛极其沉闷，师生交流极少。第三部分从师生课堂交流角度出发剖析了产生这个现象的原因，对当前存在的教师机械教学现象进行了思考。第四部分从教师本身角度出发，反思教师应该如何改善自身的生存状态，并提出了当前仍然存在的问题。
[关键词] 分析、 困难、 课堂交流
1. Introduction
We people do not live only as individuals. As members of the society, we are always in relation with others, and always in a social context. We need and must communicate with others, like our families, workmates and so on. As teachers, we should communicate with our students. What is communication in the classroom? How to communicate with different students? Why different teachers communicate with the students in different ways? With these questions, I observed a class for a whole day. And I got some. Though I am still not very clear about it , I want to write out what I thought, what puzzled me and what is still puzzling me.
2. What is classroom communication?
Communication scholars are always thinking what communication is. I think it may be the interaction of different people. The classroom communication is the interaction between the teachers and the students.
The term communication is abstract, and like all words, has several meanings. Classroom communication consists of the verbal and nonverbal transactions between teacher and students and between or among students. (Pamela J. Cooper,1991). He said that in order to communicate, we need interactants and a message. We also need channels (hearing, sight, and the other senses) through which the message can be sent and received. In addition, it also consists of feedback (verbal or nonverbal), noise (signal), and environment (classroom climate).
2.1 What is the nature of the classroom communication?
Among all the kinds of classroom communication, the communication between teachers and students is very important.
Communication is a transactional process that is complex, symbolic, and a relational component. From a transactional process perspective, we are who we are in relation to the other person with whom we are communicating. In other words, when we say communication is transactional, we are saying that people adapt and change their own communication-even as it is occurring-based on their perception of the way in which the other person is communicating to them.( Pamela J. Cooper, 1991).
Berlo defines process and some of the implications of viewing communication as a process:
If we accept the concept of process, we view events and relationships as dynamic, on-going, ever-changing, continuous. When we label something as a process, we also means that it does not have a beginning, an end, a fixed sequence of events. It is not static, at rest. It is moving. The ingredients within a process interact; each affects the others.(cited from Pamela J. Cooper, 1991).
Arno Bellack and his colleagues devised a system to analyze classroom communication according to four moves: 1. Structuring, 2. Soliciting, 3.Responding, 4.Reacting. (cited from Pamela J. Cooper, 1991).
2.2 Characteristics of classroom communication
The classroom communication is similar to other communication. But it is still a little different from others: Five characteristics are notable. 1. Roles are fairly limited and adhered to carefully. 2. A second characteristic of classroom communication is that most messages are informational rather than persuasive in nature. 3. the third is that schools focus on improving students’ competencies. 4. Closely related to this characteristic is a fourth one-socialization. 5. Finally, a fifth characteristic of communication in the classroom is that evaluation is a major component of the educational environment. (cited from Pamela J. Cooper, 1991)
2.3 Why classroom communication?
The actions in the classroom includes the teachers’ teaching and the students’ learning and the communication between them. Classroom communication is an important way for the teachers and the students to interact.
We are all teachers. Nowadays, teachers are more and more silent. But when we are in the classroom, we shouldn’t be silent. We must speak out to let the students understand or help them think by themselves. So we need classroom communication.
2.4 What data does it work with?
the observation in a classroom works with the following: field notes, interview, conversation, autobiographical writing, teachers’ stories, family stories, and photo personal artifacts letters. In this paper, I will mainly work with interview, conversation, teachers’ stories.
2.5 Why I want to do the observation?
My knowing about teachers is always changing. After I had been an English teacher for sixteen years in the junior middle school in Wuyi.，I found some difficulties in teaching. I am puzzled ,So are my workmates. I decided to observe their life in the school as teachers. And they agreed.
3. Our stories
3.1 Story in the first class
December the third in 2010, I startedto observe the classes. The first class begins at a quarter to eight and the last class ends at half past sixteen. There are seven classes a day. They are mathematics, science, society, English, Chinese, music and PE. When I came in, some of the students turned around to have a look at me. A few of them were a bit surprised. The teacher is a man who is a little older than me. He is familiar to me. He said hello to me and began his class. He didn’t feel any difference and looked natural. First he checked the homework then explained something new. I looked around and found that about half students were listening to the teacher carefully. But two boys didn’t listen to him at all. They just looked at their desks without a word. I thought they were reading novels. Some students were talking in a low voice or doing anything else. A boy put his head on the desk. Time went on, the teacher was writing something on the blackboard. He was illustrating. Several girls’ mind went away. The teacher is patient, he is giving his class as his plan. Twenty minutes later, fewer students were still listening to the teacher. I could hear some noise came from some different places in the classroom all the time. The teacher was still going on, I couldn’t judge whether he knew about what the students were doing. He just taught his lesson.Sometimes he asked several questions, but nobody put up his/her hand. It was time for workbook. Some students were doing the exercises, some were not. The teacher came down to have a look at what the students did. But he just stayed in the front for a few minutes and went back to the teacher’s desk. Then he checked the answers. He asked a student to share his answer with others, the little boy was a little shy and he spoke in a low voice. There was something wrong in his answer, the teacher asked other students to think it over again and correct it. Finally he explained it himself. Time went by, some students were a little impatient. A girl was fighting with the sleep. She looked so sleepy. The clock was on the back wall, a boy turned back to see it again and again. Class was over, but the teacher still had something to say, he went on. To my surprise the students were patient then. They were waiting. Two students of next class were playing near the back door. Some turned back. Some students began to talk again. The teacher finished his talk, all the students stood up and said goodbye to the teacher.
3.2 Story in the second class
It is a quarter to nine when we came into the classroom because we didn’t hear the bell. This is a science class. She is the head teacher. More students obeyed the rules. Only the boy who put his head on the desk last class began to talk to others. Fewer students talked or did anything else. But many students still couldn’t follow the teacher. Some students began to talk after fifteen minutes. I still couldn’t see any motivation on her face. She just said and said. I left the classroom for nearly a quarter. When I came back, a boy was asked to stand there. I didn’t know why, maybe he did something he shouldn’t do. The teacher wrote some exercises on the blackboard. Most students began to copy it. But some just did like they were copying because they didn’t look at the blackboard at all. When they checked the answers, most students wrote them down. When the bell rang, the teacher did not finish either, all the students were waiting patiently.
3.3 Story in the third class
The third class was politics. The teacher was just graduated from the university. The students kept on talking in his class. He was a little nervous when he saw me. It made him sad to let me meet him in such a class. His face turned red. I went away….
The last class in the morning is English. I am also an English teacher in this school. When the teacher knew that I would go to observe her class she felt a little nervous. She changed her teaching plan. She was not natural in her class. I felt a little sorry. I don’t think I should stay there. Just then, another teacher came to have a talk with me, so I went away again.
3.4 Story in the fourth class
They had lunch at twenty past eleven. At twelve ten, most students came back to the classroom. They were talking or brawling. A few students were doing their homework. The head teachers’ coming changed it. Most students sat down quietly and began to do the exercises. After the teacher left here, some of them went on talking. My staying made no difference to them. It is a rule here to let the students study by themselves before the class in the afternoon. I left the classroom to walk around. All the students were in their classrooms. Most head teachers were here. Some teachers were giving classes. Some were sitting at the teachers’ desk to keep the students quiet. Some classes were having tests.
3.5 Story in the fifth class
Twenty past thirteen, the first class began. This is a Chinese class. After greeting, the head teacher began her class. It seemed that she prepared a lot for this class. She was giving the class as she planned. But the students paid a little attention. Many of them were doing other things. When she asked questions, nobody waned to answer. She asked a few students sitting in the front to answer them. She looked a little worried. Nobody was talking except the teacher. More and more students looked sleepy. So was I.
3.6 Story in the sixth class
Next class was music. But there was going to be a body-shaping exercises contest here. So the students were asked to go to the playground to learn the exercises. The music teacher stood behind the students for a few minutes. There were several classes on the playground at this time. Teachers take their turns to be on duty. Every teacher is responsible for a half day. After a small talk with me, the music teacher left. After her leave, some students began to stand there just watching. They are mainly boys. The girls were interested in it. Most of them were learning hard. I had been there for nearly twenty minutes, the head teacher came. The students saw her and began to do. But they still looked languid. The head teacher said that she had no hope to gain a place in the coming contest. When she saw what the students were doing, she was irritated. She asked me to have a walk with her near the river outside the school. I went away with the head teacher. The last class was PE, the students would stay there learning. The PE teacher was not on duty, either. He wouldn’t come.
4. My understanding
4.1 What I got after the day in the classroom.
I have been in the classroom for nearly one day. When I sat at the back of the class, I found my workmates were like teaching machines. They just said what they were asked to say. They were neither happy nor sad, just numb. But they are all young persons. They were much different from the situations when they were with me. In other words, they didn’t communicate with the students at all. I thought I found the reasons why I was so sad at that time. Maybe I look the same as them when we were in the classroom. Just like Albert Cullum said, the words, the words ,the word, only words. And our students, what they could do is just ‘we should listen and listen and listen.’(Albert Cullum). It is a great sad for us teachers.
We should face this problem. As teachers, there are not many that we can do. But we must do something. We should develop ourselves. Several communication variables contribute to building a positive relationship between student and teacher-positive self-concept, effective self-disclosure, accurate perception, and shared language and meaning. (Pamela J. Cooper,1991)
4.2 Further thinking about teacher identity
Before I went here, I knew little about teacher. But I felt a lot because of ‘ teacher’. My parents were teachers, we moved from a school to another school. I could know more about teachers. They are virtuous and laborious. They hope every student can make a great progress. But they were often disappointed. More and more pressure came. They were asked to follow the requests of the government, the headmaster and the parents. They lost themselves at last. They did like machines. The teachers in the classes were different from the persons in the society. They felt more and more unhappy when time went by. They could feel nothing at last. Teachers are so important to the students during the process they grow. So now it is a great society problem. People paid more attention on it. But it needs time. We are teachers, we can effect the students deeply. If we can find ourselves, if we can make it clear what we can do, if we can be happy teachers, our students can be happy students, the whole society will be happier. We can’t just wait others to change our life, we can wait, we should wait, but we mustn’t just wait.
[References]
[1] Chen Xiao (2001), Narrative Inquiry.
[2] D. Jean Clandinin and F.Michael Connelly (2000). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers. Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research. 211.
[3] John Dewey (1933) How We Think. A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process.
[4] Pamelar J. Cooper (1991) Communication for the classroom teacher(Fifth edition) 1-11.
[5] Richard, P. Lipka and Thomas, M. Brinthaupt (1998). The Role of Self in Teacher Development. State University of New York Press.
