Attitudes in Teacher Talk in EFL Classroom from the Perspective of Appraisal Theory ()
1. Introduction
In China, where English is a foreign rather than a second language, classroom is in most places the main, and in some places even the only, source of language learning, and Teacher Talk (TT) is the main target language input for language learners. TT refers to the speech that teachers use in classroom to instruct students in language knowledge, engage them in conversation, and plan classroom activities. TT is a special kind of language that teachers use to communicate and interact with learners in classroom. In general, TT is related to the classroom context and includes repetition, rephrasing for clarity, and interactions with learners such as questions, answers, feedback, and evaluation. Effective TT that makes teacher understood as easily as possible may provide essential support to facilitate both language comprehension and learners’ production. High-quality TT can improve students’ learning, foster positive interactions between teachers and students, reduce the distance between them, and produce positive teaching outcomes.
In the classroom teaching context, teachers not only explain and illustrate the teaching materials and input linguistic knowledge, but also communicate and interact with students on a certain topic or classroom activity. Therefore, the teachers inevitably have to express their views, opinions and even personal feelings on certain issues and phenomena, especially in the feedback to students’ responses and performance in class, hence it is necessary to utilize language of evaluation. Moreover, the evaluative function of language cannot be ignored in the process of English learning because it helps language learners better understand the basic meaning of vocabulary and better appreciate the communicative strategies and intentions of the author of the discourse when using evaluative language resources ( Zhang, 2010 ). Teachers’ ability to use these evaluative discourses appropriately plays a crucial role in effectively motivating students to learn and participate in class, and in achieving the desired and satisfactory teaching and learning outcomes.
Appraisal Theory (AT), or Appraisal System, founded by James R. Martin in the 1990s, has attracted strong research interest in linguistics, and has become one of the highlights and heated issues in the development of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) in the past two decades ( Wen & Yang, 2011 ). More and more international and domestic scholars have used AT to analyze various discourses, such as news reports, commercial advertisements, drama sketches, etc. However, not many studies have analyzed TT from the perspective of AT, and this research area still needs further depth and refinement. Especially, there haven’t been many studies on the Appraisal theory’s application to the study of English TT. As a result, this article aims to close the gap in this field.
The present study is mainly concerned with following issues: one is to identify the distribution of Affect, Judgment, Appreciation and their subcategories in TT and uncover the underlying causes of the aforementioned distribution. The other is to fully comprehend the function of Appraisal resources in establishing the interpersonal relationships between teachers and students, as well as how these Attitude resources are employed by the teacher to motivate students and create a more engaging classroom environment. In order to explore these issues, the following three questions are examined in this study:
1) What categories of Attitude resources can be found in TT? What are the frequencies of corresponding categories of Attitude resources?
2) How are the resources embedded in the Attitude subsystems distributed? What characteristics and causes inhere in the utilization of Attitude resources?
3) How can these Attitude resources affect the teacher-student interaction and support the instructor in fostering an engaging learning environment?
2. Literature Review
Previous Studies on Teacher Talk
Foreign researches on TT in classroom began in the 1950s and was represented by Michael H. Long, Rod Ellis, Dick Allwright, Kathleen M. Bailey, Marta Anton, Jeremy Harmer, etc. They have analyzed and explored TT from multiple perspectives by using various research methods, and have achieved many results. Among them, Long (1983) was the first to suggest the role of TT in second language acquisition. Nunan (1991) pointed out that TT plays a crucial role in classroom organization and learners’ language acquisition, and even plays a decisive role in the success or failure of classroom teaching. Allwright and Bailey (1991) claim that TT is not only an important way to impart knowledge to learners but also a crucial means to control learners’ behavior. TT plays an essential part in college English teaching. While the traditional analysis tended to focus on the features of TT only for language input purpose, namely, instructional purpose, and concentrate on a cursory analysis and description of teacher talk based on words, intonation, lexical use, structure, and discourse ( Chaudron, 1988 ).
Many scholars and researchers in China have done a lot of research on TT in EFL classroom, and the results are quite fruitful, covering different subject levels such as higher education, secondary education, primary education, preschool education. There have been numerous studies conducted on TT to date, beginning with the effects on classroom instruction exerted by pronunciation, intonation, speech speed, questioning, feedback, and error correction, then followed by discourse constructs, characteristics and utility, research reviews, and corpus constructs of TT ( Zhao, 1998 ; Zhang, 2016 ). However, since 2016, the fervor of research on TT in EFL classroom has declined ( Wan & Xiao, 2022 ). Meanwhile, the Appraisal approach is seldom adopted to study TT. The impact of TT’s interpersonal meaning and attitude resources on students’ acquisition of foreign languages, on the relationship between teachers and students, as well as on the teaching process and outcomes, has received scant consideration in the studies mentioned above. There is a research gap in this area.
Previous Studies on Appraisal Theory
Appraisal Theory (AT), or Appraisal system, introduced and developed by Martin (1997, 2000) , Martin & Rose (2003) , Martin & White (2005, 2008) , White (1998, 2008) and their associates ( Coffin, 2000, 2002 ; Eggins & Slade, 1997 ), is the latest development and even breakthrough of the study of interpersonal meaning under the framework of Systemic Functional Grammar. “Appraisal”, according to Martin (2000) , refers to “semantic resources utilized to manage emotions, judgments, and valuations, as well as resources for amplifying and engaging with these evaluations.” For the goal of “positioning” (directing, encouraging) those listeners’ or readers’ perspectives by speakers and writers, lexicogrammatical resources are used to form interactions between speaker and listener or writer and reader ( Droga & Humphrey, 2002 ). Bednarek (2006) describes the importance of AT to evaluation research as “the sole systematic, thorough, and sophisticated framework of evaluative language.” The linguistic resources that a writer or speaker can use to convey their attitudes, get involved in propositions, and evaluate judgments of meanings are the focus of AT ( Martin & White, 2005 ). According to Martin (2001) , the term “Appraisal” is used as a cover-all term to include all evaluative uses of language. It is defined as “the semantic resources used to negotiate emotions, judgments and valuations, with resources for amplifying and engaging with these evaluations.” The goal of AT is to create a set of systems of evaluative resources for examining interpersonal meaning in discourses.
J. R. Martin, P. R. R. White, and Donna R. Miller are the leading researchers who have significantly contributed to the analysis of media discourses. White (1998) made an effort to create fresh perspectives on the distinctive English style. Hood (2004) is the one who initially used the AT to study academic speech. Thompson (2000) shifted the focus from the sentence level to the lexical level and evaluated expressions of propositions based on various parameters. Martin & White (2005) describe in detail the three subsystems of AT and point out that the attitudinal system is central and that the three subsystems are complementary to each other. Since then, scholars have widely applied AT to the study of different types of discourse such as news reports, short stories, advertisements, school discourses, media discourses, casual conversation, science discourses, popular science discourses, history discourses, judicial text, online discussion of literary texts, narratives and literary texts, academic discourses and autobiographical discourses ( Hyland, 2005 ; Birot, 2008 ; Beangstrom & Adendroff, 2013 ; Engelbrecht, 2020 ), etc.
In China, Chinese scholars have done a lot of work in theory introduction, construction and discourse analysis ( Wang, 2001 ; Li, 2004 ; Feng & Qi, 2014 ; Wang, 2017 ). The theoretical study primarily focuses on the introduction of AT; Wang (2001) presents some background information on appraisal systems, the framework, and their operation. Numerous other Chinese academics also contributed to the further introduction and advancement of AT. The interpersonal model would be expanded in the context of SFL, according to Li (2004) . Zhang and Liu (2006) discovered, after comparing Halliday’s SFL with Martin’s AT, that the former approach is constrained by formal classification while the latter provides a more thorough and systematic treatment of the social semiotic features. Pang (2013) explores the discursive construction of the legitimacy of war by evaluative resources in the Iraqi war discourse; Wang (2017) analyzes the significance of evaluation in the translation of political news discourse. Wang and Qu (2020) proposed that linguistic modality is the object of evaluation research in China, while evaluation semantics can also be expressed through non-linguistic modality.
At present, discourse research from the perspective of AT is comprehensive and in-depth, especially the Attitude system has received much attention, involving various genres, such as news reporting, political, literary, business, academic, medical, educational, and courtroom discourses ( Feng & Miao, 2022 ). Reviewing previous studies reveals that not much study has been discovered regarding conversation analysis, particularly the analysis of TT, with the AT serving as a guiding theory. AT is seldom used in the study of college English teaching. This is why the author chooses the subsystem Attitude from Appraisal system to analyze TT in EFL classroom. To fill in this research gap, it is really of great importance to improve college English teaching. Due to the dearth of studies on TT, the purpose of this study is to apply the AT to the analysis of excellent college English TT. As the space is limited, the three subsystems that make up the Attitude system—Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation—as well as each of their corresponding subcategories, will be covered in detail to examine Attitude resources in TT, and determine how these Attitude resources affect the interpersonal relationships between teachers and students, aid in the creation of an engaging teaching environment, and maximize teaching effectiveness. So, the Attitude resources in TT will be the exclusive subject of this study.
3. Attitude Framework in Appraisal Theory
Attitude system, which focuses on the linguistic resources embedded in text for judgments, is the central system among the three systems of AT. Attitude is concerned with “values through which speakers convey judgment and connect emotional responses with participants and processes” ( White, 2001 ). It is divided into three semantic areas, which often stand for emotion, ethics, and aesthetics. Any remark that conveys an opinion, whether positive or negative, or that might be interpreted as urging the reader to offer their own opinion, whether positive or negative, expresses an attitude ( Martin & White, 2005 ). The following characteristics of the Attitude system are listed: 1) Attitude can be either positive or negative; 2) Attitudinal meanings are situated along a sliding scale of force or intensity from low to high; 3) Attitude can be either implicitly or explicitly conveyed; and 4) Attitude is culture-oriented and linked to readers’ ideological orientation. Every attitudinal meaning is influenced by the specific cultural and ideological context.
Attitude, the core of the AT, is the general term for these meanings in relation to emotional responses and value systems. It makes reference to linguistic resources that deal with people’s emotions, such as emotional reactions, behavioral judgments, and evaluation of things. Three different sorts of attitude have been identified in Attitude system: Affect (people’s feelings), Judgment (people’s character), and Appreciation (the value of things). Linguistic resources for explaining emotional responses are the focus of Affect; linguistic resources for evaluating behavior in accordance with kinds of normative principles are the concentration of Judgment, and linguistic resources for assessing the value of things are the focus of Appreciation. Affective, Judgmental, and Appreciative are typically independent of one another, interact semantically, and are fundamentally related. The classification and definition of Attitude system are summarized in Table 1.
4. Methodology
Data Collection
EFL classroom in this study is referring in particular to college spoken English class, which is highly interactive and dialogic because teachers and students mainly talk about some topics related to the teaching material in a variety of classroom activities and tasks. The data for the present study come from the corpus built by the author through transcribing the video recordings of ten
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Table 1. Classification and definition of Attitude system in Appraisal Theory
lectures delivered by five college English teachers teaching spoken English course. These five teachers selected were working in a university of foreign languages in China. They were from the same course group, and were recognized as top-ranked teachers in their departments for being popular with students. All five teachers were teaching non-English majors in their sophomore year, and the lectures were on the same topic because of the uniformity of the teaching materials used in spoken English course. At the same time, Spoken English was a municipal quality course project, and in order to facilitate the recording of the teachers’ lecture videos, the classroom where the students attended the classes was in the only recording room of the school, so this study tried to avoid external factors influencing the teachers’ attitudes. After the lectures were recorded, the author transcribed the videos into text to build a corpus of TT. Each lecture has two sessions, lasting 90 minutes. The self-built corpus has 10,445 tokens, 1896 types, 1782 lemmas.
Data Processing
Wordsmith Tools 7.0, a commonly-used software in corpus-based research, was adopted to identify Attitude resources and calculate their quantity and frequency. Afterwords, the attitudinal words appearing in the self-built corpus were analyzed from the perspective of James R. Martin’s AT. To be specific, data processing involves in the following four steps: corpus building, resources locating and classifying, distribution identifying, and resources analyzing and interpreting by adopting mixed qualitative and quantitative methods. First is to build a corpus by transcribing ten videos automatically via a smart phone APP and modifying the mistakes manually in the corpus while watching the recorded video carefully. Second is to locate the language components that represent Attitude resources, classify them under Affect, Judgment, Appreciation, and their subcategories according to their semantic functions. Third is to calculating the quantity and frequency of the resources used in three attitudinal subsystems and their subcategories in the corpus with the help of Wordsmith Tools. 7.0. Last but not least is to analyze the differences of distribution among three Attitude’s subsystems and their subcategories based on the data collected, to analyze how Attitude lexis (including nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) are used in terms of Martin’s AT, and to uncover the meanings and functions of these Attitude resources in TT in EFL classroom.
5. Result and Discussion
General Findings
The general term for these meanings in relation to emotional responses and value systems is Attitude, which is the central component of AT. It refers to linguistic resources that deal with people’s feelings. Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation are the three subsystems of Attitude. You may find more information on the distribution of Attitude resources in Figure 1 and the distribution of the three subsystems of Attitude in Figure 2.
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Figure 1. Distribution of attitude resources.
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Figure 2. Distribution of three subsystem resources of attitude.
Figure 1 shows that across ten lectures of five teachers, 56% of the total phrases contain resources related to Attitude. It demonstrates that abundant Attitude resources are dispersed throughout TT. As a result, there are numerous Attitude resources in TT. Figure 2 illustrates the general frequency of three subsystem resources of Attitude system in teacher’s classroom language. It shows that the frequency of three Attitude sub-systems changes systematically, with frequency of Affect the lowest (10%), that of Judgment second (30%), and that of Appreciation the highest (60%). The phenomenon that Appreciations outweigh the other two categories indicates that these teachers prefer using appreciative evaluation to express their attitudes and positions. It might be attributed to several factors, such as teachers’ efforts and teaching experience, students’ reactions, instructional materials, and teaching environment. Teachers must be mindful of how they use language in classroom in order to establish a cordial rapport with students and manage the class much more easily and successfully. Instructors should have their own opinions about some subjects in the minds of the students. Evidently, teachers must exhibit the proper attitude toward students’ participation, performance, and some facts in teaching materials in order to encourage students, evaluate their performance, and so forth.
Affect
The data in Figure 1 shows that Affect resources are used least frequently (around10%). Even the most objective attitude contains a certain affect since Attitude is initially realized by Affect. The emotional reactions of teachers, who will deliver their lectures with strong personal feelings, are evaluated in EFL classroom using Affect resources. The teachers make an effort to communicate their emotions with students and forge an alignment with them, even though it will somewhat compromise the objectivity of the lessons. From this perspective, even though Affect resources only account for 10%, they are still quite significant. Dis/inclination, Un/happiness, In/security, and Dis/satisfaction are the four subcategories of Affect. For further details on how the four subcategories of Affect are distributed, see Figure 3.
Within Affect subsystem, as shown in Figure 3, the average frequency of
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Figure 3. Distribution of four subcategory resources of affect.
resources in ten lectures related to Dis/inclination (39%) is greater than that of resources related to Un/happiness (22%), Dis/satisfaction (22%), and In/security (17%). The following are some potential causes: first off, in order to demonstrate demands and requests and uphold authority, teachers frequently employ Dis/inclination resources. Dis/inclination resources are therefore more frequently available than the other three. Second, teachers will occasionally use the Dis/satisfaction resources to convey their contentment with their students, while the Un/happiness and In/security resources will be used to support and care for students, which, to some extent, aids in their confidence building. It is clear that teachers highly expect students’ active participation, and most of the time, those students will work hard to meet those goals and please their teachers, which will contribute to the success of the English class.
Dis/inclination is used to describe the teacher’s personal preferences, motives, and ideas. The emotions of happiness or unhappiness include the potential to direct these emotions toward a trigger by liking or disliking it. In/security expresses the tranquility and uneasiness we experience. Our feelings of achievement and dissatisfaction are addressed in Dis/satisfaction. Affect can be either positive or negative. Resources with a positive Affect display positive attitudinal connotations, whereas those with a negative Affect reveal the teacher’s denial. A selection of sample realizations for Affect from the corpus of TT is displayed in Table 2.
Dis/Inclination
Dis/inclination records the teacher’s personal beliefs, thoughts and inclinations. The majority of the time, teachers will employ positive Inclination resources to convey their demands and expectations to the students.
(1) I couldn’t agree with you more. I also would like to live together with someone who is outgoing, warm-hearted.
(2) I hope everyone other groups can follow group 1 and make good preparations for the presentation next class.
(3) I am looking forward to your presentation for almost one week, today is the first time we do our group work. We can’t wait to see your performance.
In most cases, teachers employ positive Inclination resources, such as “Would like” used 23 times in TT, to explicitly express her personal preference to form a close alignment with the speaker and other listeners in class as shown in example (1). Furthermore, it is perfectly acceptable for a teacher to provide an example
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Table 2. Affect resources and sample realizations in TT corpus.
for students to follow initially, but the teacher shouldn’t get in the way of the students’ inclinations. The frequent use of mental process verbs, like hope, want in example (2), may perform a pedagogical function to help make the students clear about teacher’s expectations and the plan for next class. Even negative form “can’t wait” can be used in a positive sense to explicitly make students aware of their teacher’s expectations and desires to witness and enjoy their performance, which will inspire their motivation as shown in example (3).
Un/Happiness
Un/happiness requires having joyful or sad moods and having the option of directing these emotions toward a trigger by liking or disliking it. Without a doubt, teachers ought to quickly motivate children to develop a sense of self-assurance and self-belief.
(4) We’ll be happy to get these two things. We hope everyone can get them together.
(5) Thank you, yes, we all want to be a person who is outgoing and optimistic. We’ll benefit from our optimistic personalities.
(6) By the way, from next class, you’re requested to do group work as your homework, don’t disappoint me, boys and girls?
“Happy” and “optimistic” in examples (4) and (5) show how positive Happiness resources can, to a certain extent, motivate students to work harder by depicting a shared understanding of the role of career and family in one’s life to find an echo with students in example (4), and by providing them with a kind of real-world example that will, in part, affect how they view health and life in example (5). Conversely, negative Unhappiness resources are always combined with a negative term to make the statement appear positive to convey her expectation that every student can complete their homework in an earnest manner, as shown in example (6). Yet, the students will experience some form of invisible stress in order to avoid disappointing their teacher, therefore they must take it seriously.
Dis/Satisfaction
Dis/satisfaction is the term used to describe how we feel about the activities we are involved in, including our roles as participants and observers, and how those feelings of accomplishment, frustration, and praise affect us ( Martin & White, 2005 ).
(7) From what you have performed, I guess you know more about the importance of non-verbal language in our life. I am very satisfied with your understanding of body language.
(8) I am very thankful for your cooperation.
(9) Do you think all these ways are effective in dealing with anger? Have you ever tried to use some of them to deal with anger? What are they?
In most cases, teachers will display her inner feelings through positive Satisfaction resources, like “satisfied, contented”, which serve to explicitly demonstrate how teachers commend their students’ efforts and success, which is, in some cases, a beneficial method to improve their relationships since it gives them a sense of accomplishment, as shown in example (7). Moreover, Satisfaction resources can be utilized to demonstrate the teacher’s gratitude for the students when they assist her, which is helpful to foster a harmonious learning environment, for instance (8). “Anger” is Dissatisfaction resource used twice in example (9) to describe a kind of negative emotions which is close to the topics for discussion in class whose goal is to inform students of the effective measures to deal with negative emotions. Therefore, the negative word anger will not directly impact the students’ reaction and performance in class.
In/Security
In/security, which ranks lowest in Affect resources, captures how we feel about our surroundings, including, of course, the people who share them with us, both peacefully and anxiously ( Martin & White, 2008 ). The instructor may occasionally be concerned about the students’ weaknesses as shown in example (10).
(10) Who want to be the first one in your group? No one? Anyway, please be confident of yourself! Confidence is very important.
(11) Take care of yourself in such cold days.
(12) In the real-life interviews, especially for your job interview two years later, we shouldn’t do it; otherwise an experienced interviewer will know what we are afraid of.
In some cases, the teachers draw attention to the students’ shortcomings and offer them appropriate advice to follow, as shown in example (10), “confident” serves as a form of stimulation and encouragement when none of them volunteers as well as showing how confident the instructor is in her students’ abilities. It can, to some extent, close the gap with students and motivate them to be active in class. Like example (11), the teacher wishes to demonstrate her concern for the students by use of “take care of”, which can help to bridge the gap and relieve their strain.
The subcategory “Fear” is evaluated as negative Security rather than Inclination in accordance with Ngo and Unsworth’s (2015) revisions to the Affect region of the framework, and the negative Inclination subcategory is expanded to include meanings of “Non Desire” (e.g., hesitate, unwilling). Therefore, “Afraid”, a negative Security in example (12), is used to indicate a negative feeling that an interviewee is likely to have and that may be recognized by an experienced interviewer. By explicitly employing this negative word, the teacher is expressing her concern and advice for students’ future interviews of job-hunting and trying to persuade students to watch out their gestures in interview, which is important for everyone.
Judgment
Judgment resources (30%) are employed more frequently than Affect resources but less frequently than Appreciation resources, according to the statistics cited in Figure 1. In addition to frequently being used to assess students’ ability and conduct, Judgment resources are frequently employed in EFL classrooms to assess the abilities and conduct of fictional characters that have little bearing on the students. For more information on the detailed distribution of five subcategories of resources for Judgment, see Figure 4.
Figure 4 depicts the distribution of five subcategories of Judgment resources. Within Judgment subsystem, Capacity resources account for the largest average frequency (50%), followed by Tenacity resources (22%), Propriety resources (16%), Normality resources (7%), and Veracity resources (5%). Given that Capacity resources are typically used to examine students’ ability, including skill and intelligence, while tenacity resources analyze students’ willpower, there is greater possibility for using Capacity and Tenacity resources. Teachers employ a combination of Propriety resources to highlight how respectful and ethical their students are, Normality resources to highlight how unique they are, and a little amount of Veracity resources to highlight how honest they are.
Five subcategories of Judgment can be used to evaluate people’s ability and behavior: Normality (usuality), Capacity (ability), Tenacity (inclination), Veracity (probability), and Propriety (obligation), according to the criteria for employing Judgment introduced by Halliday (1994) . Moreover, According to Martin & Rose (2003) , Judgment resources can be classified as either positive or negative and can be used either implicitly or explicitly. A selection of sample realizations for Judgement from corpus of TT is displayed in Table 3.
Normality
Normality refers to how unusual someone is. On the one hand, compared with before or others, Normality, which includes students’ state of mind, appearance and so on, means how special and how different the students are in TT, such as (13) and (14). On the other hand, it evaluates the instructional material, for example (15).
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Figure 4. Distribution of five subcategory resources of judgment.
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Table 3. Judgment resources and sample realizations in TT corpus.
(13) I know some of you are very familiar with some of these famous scenic spots, any volunteer?
(14) You are a specialist about it. Yes, part of summer palace is destroyed by foreigners’ intruder in history.
(15) From what you said, it reminds us of protection of animals and our environment. But unfortunately, a lot of people, especially the rich or people with high status still eat some valuable animal, such as whale, dolphin.
“Familiar” is explicitly employed in a positive sense in example (13). The teacher is curious about whether or not her students did a good job. The instructor is calling names in the hopes that someone will volunteer to give the presentation with assurance. “Specialist” is a positive word used in example (14) as a kind of praise to explicitly express the teacher’s satisfaction and a little surprise because what the student introduced even exceeded the teacher’s expectation. “Unfortunately” is a negative word that is used explicitly in example (15). “Unfortunately” just means that some people continue to eat these wild animals while not understanding their worth. With little impact on the students, it only analyzes the teaching materials.
Capacity
Capacity refers to a person’s capability level. Notably, it is found that large amount of sentences in TT use the modal auxiliary can 76 times in total, to evaluate students’ ability and capacity or teaching material as shown in example (16). Meanwhile, these excellent teachers simply highlight students’ strengths by using lexis like “the most talented and gifted, clever, be able to, strong” in teacher talk, as in examples (17) and (18), or the instructor will utilize Capacity resources to evaluate teaching material, as shown in example (19).
(16) Now, can you tell me your decision? Would you please?
(17) So you must be the most talented and gifted actors and actresses!
(18) You mean you will take a small pond as a bridge, when you become strong in small fish. You will go to a big pond.
(19) The only aim of building up Summer Palace is to celebrate Cixi’s birthday. It’s really ridiculous, right?
“Can” is a positive word used most frequently among Capacity resources perhaps because “can” is much easier to be uttered than the lexis like “capable, be able to”. As shown in example (16), the teacher didn’t command the student to tell his decision, instead, she uses “can” to lead a interrogative sentence to negotiate with the students on the willingness to share his decision, which is helpful to increase students’ awareness of being cooperative.“The most talented and gifted”, two positive adjectives, which refer to someone who is born with the innate capacity to perform tasks well, are employed in example (17) to explicitly compliment and congratulate on students’ performance. Also, even though the teacher exaggerates the term of “the most”, it nevertheless conveys her satisfaction and deep-seated love for students. It can truly assist the instructor get to know her students and foster an engaging classroom environment. “Strong” is a positive word used explicitly in example (18). The teacher assumed that students could achieve great personal development if they chose to work in a small company after graduation. It demonstrates that the teacher has faith in the ability of her students. That really is a great technique to create a relaxing and lively classroom environment. “Ridiculous”, a negative word, is used in example (19) to explicitly and directly condemn the dumb actions of the character “Cixi” that the student mentions in her introduction about the Summer Palace. It will not have a negative effect on the students.
Tenacity
Tenacity is the quality of being resolute and strong-willed. Teachers encourage students’ strong willpower by using positive Tenacity resources like “brave, careful, and diligent” in their talk, as in examples (20) and (21). In addition, the instructor will utilize Tenacity resources to evaluate teaching materials, as shown in example (22).
(20) All these four students are very brave and diligent, because they were trying to repeat and recite all the points of the story. Do you agree with me?
(21) Yes, your explanation about language is quite reasonable.
(22) I will give a summary for you about ways to deal with these three emotions: for anger, to talk with a friend or go for a walk and learn to be tolerant and forgiving; for nervousness, take a deep breath or keep practicing; for stress, listen to music and do sports.
“Brave” and “Diligent” are two positive words employed in example (20) to explicitly evaluate four students’ bravery and diligence, which initially contribute to their good performance. The use of these two words aids in the development of a cordial relationship between teacher and students and inspiration of other students to follow their example, which is beneficial to motivate students and close the gap with them. In example (21), “reasonable” is a positive word used to positively and explicitly assess the student’s interpretation of the language definition and to simply convey that the teacher values her students’ accomplishments. It is helpful to motivate the students. “Tolerant and forgiving” are two positive words and used explicitly in example (22). They mean that a person lets other people do and say what they want, even if they don’t like it or agree with it. They are used to evaluate the situation that the teacher has provided.
Veracity
Veracity refers to how truthful someone is. In order to subtly highlight the flaws of their students, teachers may employ negative resources implicitly, like example (23). Yet, the teacher also uses resources with negative Veracity to assess what being taught in class, for example (24).
(23) So, we need to learn how to hide our real feeling sometimes.
(24) Yes, some of college students think that there is indirect connection between learning in college and social life.
“Hide our real feeling” is a negative phrase used in implicit way in example (23). When talking about the function of body language, the teacher points out that we can read one’s mind from the gaze of his/her eyes, that why she advise the students to learn how to hide our real feeling, especially negative feeling, which can help successfully communicate with others. It shows the teacher’s consideration about students’ daily life, which is beneficial to the construction of friendship with students. “Indirect” is a negative phrase used explicitly in example (24) to present others’ opinion on the value of college education and inspire student to express their own ideas. The purpose of using this word is to promote her student recognize the direct connection between college education and future life.
Propriety
Propriety refers to how ethical someone is. Teachers commend how courteous and respectful their students are by using positive Propriety resources like “kind, considerate” in their language.
(25) The receptionist is very kind-hearted.
(26) Ok, you are really considerate, thank you very much.
(27) You are requested to try to find these ways he has mentioned in the video.
“Kind-hearted”, a positive word, is used explicitly in example (25) to evaluate the student’s excellent performance in the role-play when she has entertained her guests in a very thoughtful and precise manner. It is advantageous to foster harmony in the classroom. “Considerate”, a positive word, is used in example (26) to explicitly show the teacher’ evaluation for the student’s helpful advice after her news report. It demonstrates how much the teacher values every effort the students make—not just for their academic work but also for consideration of other people. It can greatly reduce the distance between teachers and students. In example (27), “request” is a positive Propriety used in passive voice to express explicitly what teacher requires from her students so that they will know what they are supposed to do next. The teacher uses words, like request, require, to urge students to participate in classroom activities in accordance with the lesson plan. Even in a student-centered classroom, it is necessary for the teacher to control the pace of class and to demonstrate his/her authority.
Appreciation
According to the aforementioned statistics in Figure 1, of the three Attitude category, Appreciation resources are utilized most frequently (60%). These appreciation materials are utilized very flexibly by the teacher in these five superb teachers’ talk in classroom. For further details on how the three subcategories of Appreciation resource are distributed, see Figure 5.
Within Appreciation subsystem, the distribution of the three subcategory resources of Appreciation subsystem is shown in Figure 5, with Reaction resources accounting for the highest average frequency (60%), followed by Composition (22%) and Valuation resources (18%). The following are potential causes: first off, teachers always use reaction resources to explicitly praise their students’ performance. When students have responded to questions and given presentations, the teacher should comment on their performance and engage with the class. Second, Composition and Valuation resources are mostly used for the evaluation of the teaching materials and have little bearing on students’ performance. Reaction resources are therefore far more frequently used than the other two resources.
Appreciation is used to evaluate performance and products by employing aesthetic standards. It addresses how we react to things and people’s performance, including how we evaluate things. Appreciation has three subcategories: Reaction, Composition, and Valuation. Appreciation resources can also be classified as either positive or negative and can be used either implicitly or explicitly. Reaction resources occur with the highest frequency. A selection of sample realizations for Appreciation from the corpus of TT is displayed in Table 4.
Reaction
Reaction refers to how things attract human’s attention. Among Appreciation
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Figure 5. Distribution of three subcategory resources of appreciation.
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Table 4. Appreciation resources and sample realizations in TT corpus.
resources, Reaction resources are encountered most frequently (approximate 60%). Teachers always employ positive Reaction resources to explicitly compliment students’ performance.
(28) Good afternoon, my beloved boys and girls. Nice to see you again!
(29) Great, you must have a wonderful and unforgettable Christmas day! Wish you all merry Christmas and happy new year!
(30) Very good, you have made a very good preparation on such a long dialogue with a lot of information. Well-done, thank you very much. All of you have done a great job.
(31) Yes, this story has a happy ending, thank you for your interesting stories.
(32) You have given us a very detailed answer. Terrific! Now, let’s look at some expressions.
(33) Good, thank you. You have beautiful voice.
(34) Fascinating, you all are full of imaginations!
(35) Don’t often do it, if you do it always, it will make your face change and become less beautiful.
(36) Oh, our boy, don’t you think that your voice is a little gentle!
In most cases, teachers use positive Reaction resources, such as “beloved, wonderful, interesting, good, well-done, you’ve done a great job, terrific, beautiful, and fascinating”, to cordially welcomes her students at the start of class as shown in example (28), to explicitly express the teacher’s agreement and approval (29), to explicitly laud and commend students’ performances ((30), (34)), and to explicitly praise and compliment student’s storytelling (31), answer (32), and voice after singing Beijing opera (33). The frequent use of a variety of Reaction resources in these settings demonstrates that students’ performances in class have impressed teachers deeply, and that teachers are grateful and satisfied with the student’s cooperation in class. By explicitly employing these positive Reaction resources as shown in above examples, it is extremely useful to hook students’ attention, instill confidence in students and develop friendships with students, and helpful for inspiring students to actively participate in classroom activities, fostering an engaging learning environment in classroom and reducing the distance between teachers and students for more favorable teaching effectiveness.
“Less beautiful” is a negative word used explicitly in example (35). When the teacher presented some pictures of gesture to explain the function of body language, the gesture in one picture was not good for keeping beauty, so the teacher reminded students of the awareness of the harm of the gesture and advise them not to do it often. Even though it is a negative word used explicitly, it is mainly used to evaluate the teaching content and a fictitious situation, it will not exert negative influence on students. “Gentle” is employed in an implicitly negative manner in example (36). The boy’s voice was too low to be heard when asked to answer a question. But, in order to preserve the peaceful environment, the teacher used humor rather than a straightforward expression of her displeasure. The word “gentle” itself incorporates some praise, but it is employed here to indicate that the teacher wants the boy to speak louder because the tone is so low. This is done to safeguard the student’s self-esteem. The teacher’s wit, knowledge, and years of teaching experience are all well displayed.
Composition
Human’s awareness, perceptions about proportionality, details and complexity are all part of composition. Teachers frequently use composition resources in their talk to comment on instructional materials that don’t have much effect on the students as in examples (37) and (38).
(37) Wonderful, thank you. You have given us a detailed analysis of personalities of Japanese, British and American.
(38) Yes, In Chinese culture, nature is beautiful and powerful, human being want to live harmoniously with nature.
(39) It is really hard to get career and family together when there are conflicts, especially for person with great power or in upper class.
“Detailed” is explicitly employed in a positive sense in example (37) to evaluate the students’ analysis of personalities in three countries mentioned above, it shows teacher’s satisfaction and agreement with students. “Harmoniously” is a positive word used in example (38) to explicitly explain the part of characteristics of Chinese culture that the way human deals with the relation with nature. “Hard”, a negative word, is used in example (39) to explicitly evaluate the teaching content and to explain the difficulty of balancing career and family. While both of them are the evaluations of teaching content, so it has little influence on students.
Valuation
The evaluation of ideational worth, such as importance and authenticity, is the subject of Valuation. Teachers frequently utilize Valuation resources to comment on the instructional materials, which have little impact on the students.
(40) By the way, your presentation is really informative.
(41) Before role-play, some words and expressions are given here. It will be useful and helpful for your dialogue-making later.
(42)Time is precious; we have to stop our discussion.
“Informative”, a positive word, is used explicitly in example (40) to evaluate the presentation that provides a lot of information for others. It can inspire students’ motivation. “Useful, helpful” and “precious” are three positive words used explicitly in example (41) to emphasize the value of the expressions given in dialogue-making, and in (42) to evaluate the value of time in the process of discussion, which are the evaluations of instructional material and have little impact on students.
6. Conclusion
Major Findings
With a relatively detailed analysis of the corpus of TT of ten lectures in previous parts, the major findings are summarized as follows:
Firstly, Attitude resources across ten lectures account for 56%. It implies that TT in EFL classroom contains a wealth of Attitude resources. It can be attributed to numerous variables, such as teacher’s efforts and teaching experience, students’ responses, teaching materials, and so on. Without a doubt, teachers constantly strive to organize the entire class more efficiently and smoothly in order to foster a relaxed environment and build harmonious relationship with students. Students anticipate that teachers should express their personal opinions in class. As a result, the instructor must act appropriately and show correct attitudes toward teaching materials, students’ responses, and their performance.
Secondly, the frequency of Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation resources is 10%, 30%, and 60%, respectively. It is obvious that resources of Appreciation and Judgment are used more frequently than that of Affect. The first concern of Affect is recognizing both positive and negative feelings or emotional states. As the class’s coordinator and knowledge-transmitter, teachers should put students first and refrain from expressing too much personal emotion. The low frequency of Affect resources indicates that the teachers in these classes make the students the leading role and herself or himself a facilitator. Second, Resources for Appreciation and Judgment are used by the teachers to evaluate students’ performance and make judgments about their ability. Also, teachers will occasionally express opinions and judgments regarding the teaching materials, and when they do so, they will make every effort to demonstrate the objectivity of the evaluation by employing more expressions of Judgment and Appreciation than Affect.
Thirdly, Affect resources across ten lectures reveals that they occupy the smallest share, around 10%. While within the Affect subsystem, Dis/inclination (39%) holds a more significant position than Un/happiness (22%), Dis/satisfaction (22%), and In/security (17%). Teachers tend to employ Dis/inclination resources to communicate their expectations and demands, which helps to retain teachers’ authority. Teachers will occasionally express their dissatisfaction with their students. These resources are intended to support and care for students, which, in some cases, help them acquire confidence.
Fourthly, Judgment resources account for 30%. Capacity resources (50%) make up the majority of the Judgement subsystem, followed by resources of Tenacity (22%), Propriety (16%), Normality (7%), and Veracity (5%). First, teachers use a lot of Capacity and Tenacity resources to highlight how capable and determined their students are in order to motivate them. They also use a few Propriety resources to highlight how ethical and polite their students are, and few Veracity and Normality resources to highlight how honest and special their students are. Additionally, teachers will use positive Judgment resources to explicitly praise their students in order to close the gap and build strong interpersonal relationships with them. They will also explicitly criticize the characters in the teaching material since it won’t have a negative impact on students,.
Finally, Appreciation account for 60%, the highest within Attitude system. Reaction resources make up the highest proportion (60%) of the Appreciation subsystem, followed by Composition (22%) and Valuation (18%). Teachers frequently employ a variety of resources for positive Reaction to explicitly compliment their students’ work. It is a great way not only to encourage and motivate them to pay close attention in class and actively participate in the activities, but also to build strong interpersonal relationships between teachers and students, resulting in an active classroom environment and better teaching outcomes. Moreover, teachers will be explicit in their criticism of the characters in the teaching material so as not to negatively impact the students. Resources for Composition and Valuation aren’t as frequently utilized as those for Reactions. They merely serve to offer some commentary on the teaching materials.
Implications
Some theoretical implications are realized through the incorporation of the Attitude system from AT into TT. Additionally, some pedagogical implications are also provided, hoping that they should be useful advice for English teachers.
Theoretical Implications
Although AT has been applied to analyzing a variety of discourses, the author is conscious that there are still certain challenges and shortcomings when conducting the analysis of Attitude resources under AT in English TT. The characteristics of TT are unique. Teachers frequently substitute short phrases or even single words for full sentences in order to communicate more effectively. As a result, it can be challenging to evaluate the appraisal resources in TT without taking the entire text into account. The problem is that the present AT gives us some phrases that are recommended for the corresponding systems, but in reality, these words have varied meanings and implications in various institutionalized or linguistic contexts. As a result, these words shouldn’t be limited to a single subsystem. To properly classify the words, it is crucial to distinguish linguistic and institutionalized contexts. Additionally, the current AT framework is adjective-oriented, which makes it challenging to cater to the evaluation of TT. It is vital and necessary for the current AT framework to integrate a number of standards pertaining to those nominal and verbal groups that are highly evaluative in order to make the framework more flawless. As a result, it is envisaged that the AT framework will be further expanded in this area.
Pedagogical Implications
It’s likely to offer some useful advice to college English teachers who desire to improve teaching through the analysis of part five and the summary of characteristics.
First and foremost, classroom TT should act as a communicative link between teachers and students. Teachers should fully utilize Judgment resources to recognize students’ aptitude and Appreciation resources to explicitly value students’ work in order to motivate them to participate in class. Meanwhile, the development of the students’ physical and mental health should be positively impacted by TT. As a result, the amicable ties between teachers and students will be fortified and harmonious classroom atmosphere will be constructed. This pedagogical implication is therefore crucial for English teachers and a successful English class.
Secondly, English is one of the most significant subjects in China. However, a lot of college students find it monotonous and challenging to have a good command of. This particular group of students responds better to affection and humor, therefore teachers should focus on them more and utilize Attitude resources to motivate and inspire them to advance. Being an excellent English teacher is a challenging and significant job, while we teachers should do our best. This appraisal analysis of the TT in EFL classroom serves as an illustration of the discourse characteristics of five outstanding English teachers. It is expected that resources on both positive and negative attitudes would serve as insightful advice for other English teachers.