A Case Study on the Pattern of Classroom Discourse in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language

Based on the IRF (initiation, response, and feedback) classroom discourse structure model proposed by Sinclair and Coulthard, this research analyzes and studies the actual corpus of Chinese classroom teaching in Thailand, focusing on the structural model of teacher-student communication discourse, mainly from two aspects of teachers’ feedback. On the one hand, it investigates whether IRF is fully applicable to Chinese classroom teaching and whether there are special situations to it. On the other hand, it attempts to summarize the discourse structure model of Chinese classroom teaching and explores the application of the research results in helping Chinese teachers improve their teaching quality in hope that constructive suggestions can be proposed for teaching Chinese as a foreign language.

Teaching English as a lingua franca in China

The last decade has witnessed a significant increase of research on English as a lingua franca (ELF) as today's world becomes progressively more globalized (Lei & Liu, 2018). However, studies on ELF in the Chinese contexts remain sparse although linguistic research in China has kept pace with the development of international linguistic academia. Moreover, many researchers studying ELF-informed teaching in China are either non-Chinese scholars or researchers working in countries other than China (Si, 2019). In other words, this newly emerged field of research has not yet been widely embraced by Chinese scholars, nor its paradigm has been promoted in English education while traditional native-English-based teaching has been challenged and initiatives have been taken to promote English education within the ELF paradigm in many countries in the expanding circle (see e.g., Sifakis & Tsantila, 2019). In this paper, we address the issue through identifying various hindrances to teaching ELF in Chinese classroom and analyzing the factors leading to the difficulties and problems with implementing the ELF-informed teaching in Chinese context. Following this, we explore the prospects for taking advantage of the pedagogical value of ELF research in the foreseeable future.