A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY ON THE TEACHER TALK AT EYL CLASSROOM

The use of constructive teacher talk (TT) is very important and effective in scaffolding young learners to improve their skill in target language. Nevertheless, there is an argument that too much teacher talk can even decrease students‟ motivation. The present study tries to reveal the suitable amount and the students‟ perception of teacher talk. Apart from that, there is an attempt to find out the features of teacher talk, the frequency of either display and referential questions or teachers‟ assessments and ways in giving feedback. This descriptive study is conducted to find out how teachers make use of their teacher talk naturally in classroom settings. To gain deeper insight and understanding, both qualitative and quantitative research design were employed. The qualitative data were obtained through direct observation and teachers – students‟ interview. Moreover, the teachers – students‟ questionnaire, video recording and field notes also added significant value towards the findings of this study. Quantitative data, on the other hand, were gained from the calculation of students‟ questionnaire scores which are represented in percentage. Both qualitative and quantitative data were coded, categorized, interpreted, descriptively described and finally displayed in the form of tables. The research findings show that despite the teacher talk‟s capability to be good model for young learners, most students found the class more motivating, interesting, and challenging when the teachers minimized their teacher talk and made use not only more constructive teacher talk but also interesting activities. In conclusion, since teacher talk serves not only as a medium to achieve young learners‟s learning objectives but also as a tool to build better dynamic interaction between teacher and students in classroom settings, it is advisable for all EFL teachers to improve their effective constructive talk towards their students.

Teaching young children is very much different from teaching adults in a way that they are often more enthusiastic, lively learners, and learn the target language faster than adults.These require experienced teachers to be able to find ways to construct successful lessons and activities which place pupils at the very heart of teaching and learning.Language becomes essential in providing young learners with a new tool, opens up new opportunities for doing things and for organizing information through the use of words and symbols.It is clear that constructive talk is one of the most essential ingredients of a good lesson, a vital part to engage any student in their learning, an instrument to transform relationships (Coultas, 2009 p.1).
However, lessons that encourage and organize pupils to talk about their learning are not easy to teach.Thus, teachers should function their talk as "central point" to gain effective teaching and learning process (Vygotsky, 1978).Wood as cited in Cameron (2001 pp. 8-9) makes clearer that teachers" talk is very effective in scaffolding young learners in various ways, thus they have to manage their talk to become meaningful, encouraging and use a lot of repetitions on key language in order to make young learners be able to improve their skills in the target language (McNaughton, 2002).Nunan strengthens that teachers always modify the language they use to make it easier to comprehend.This, in turn, helps the learner to acquire the target language (1989 p. 25).
Acknowledging its importance, many research have been conducted on TT.TT makes up around 70% of classroom language (Cook, 2000;Chaudron, 1998. Xiao-Hui (2010) analyzing Teacher Talk on the basis of Relevance Theory was able to prove that TTused in relevancewill be a decisive factor of students" success or failure in classroom teaching.Meanwhile, Price (2003) investigated the amount of TT and suggested that teachers should continue developing an awareness of their teaching practice and ways to avoid "needless or overlengthy explanations and instructions (Richards and Lockhart, 1996 p.114) or refine their questioning and explanations methods.In line with this, Nunan (1991 p. 198) states that research … shows that teachers need to pay attention to the amount and type of talking they do, and to evaluate its effectiveness in the light of their pedagogical objectives.
Nevertheless, the findings obtained so far haven"t really revealed the phenomena of the importance and effectiveness of teacher talk.Thus, this study attempts to answer the following questions: (1) What is the amount of TTT ( teacher Talk Time) used by the teachers in classroom settings?, (2) What is the students" perception towards the amount of TTT (Teacher Talk Time) used by EFL teachers in the process of teaching and learning?, (3) What are the TT ( Teacher Talk) features commonly used by EFL teachers in the process of teaching and learning?, (4) What"s the frequency of display questions and referential questions used by teachers in classroom activity?, and (5) What"s the frequency of different types of teacher"s assessment?In what ways will teachers give feedback to students when the errors occur during the teaching-learning process?Some fundamental theories are taken as the basic of this study.
The Role of TT in Foreign Language Learning "If the second language is learnt as a foreign language in a language class in a non-supportive environment, like in Indonesia , instruction (teacher talk) is likely to be the major or even the only source of target language input" (Stern, 1983 p. 400).Krashen with his SLA theory says TT determines successful language learning by providing plenty of and high quality input for (1985 p. 78).Nunan (1991) also points out: Teacher talk is a crucial of importance, not only for the organization of the classroom but also for the process of acquisition.It is through language that teachers either succeed or fail in implementing their plans.In terms of acquisition, teacher talk is important because it is probably the major source of comprehensible target language input the learner is likely to receive.
Yet, to determine what the best and the most effective teacher talk is like is not easy since every teacher brings their certain characteristics which are influenced by different age, sex, previous education, and personal qualities.Above all, teachers also bring their language background and experience, professional training as a linguist and teacher, previous language teaching experience, and more or less formulated theoretical presuppositions about language, language learning and teaching" (Stern, 1983 p. 500).Long and Sato (1983) observed all kinds of phenomena about teacher talk, and made some comparisons between the language teachers use in and out of language classrooms.Their main findings are as follows: 1. Formal adjustments occur at all language levelsin pronunciation, lexis and grammar.2. In general, ungrammatical speech modifications do not occur.3. Interactional adjustments occur.(Ellis, 1985 p. 145) Besides, teacher talk is simplified in other wayssyntactically, phonologically and semantically.Chaudron (1988 p. 85), proposed teacher talk in language classrooms with his seven modifications: 1) Rate of speech appears to be slower; 2) Pauses, which may be evidence of the speaker planning more, are possibly more frequent and longer; 3) Pronunciation tends to be exaggerated and simplified ; 4)Vocabulary use is more basic; 5) Degree of subordination is slower ; 6) More declaratives and statements are used than questions; 7)Teachers may self-repeat more frequently.
The important issue is whether the amount of teacher talk influences learners" L2 acquisition of foreign language learning.Many researche have proved that that teachers tend to do most of the classroom talk-over 70% of the total talk.(Cook, 2000;Chaudron, 1998).When TT dominates the classroom, ST will be indeed severely restricted, allowing them only little opportunity to develop their language proficiency.In order to avoid the overuse of TT, teachers have to maximize STT and minimize TTT.Harmer points out that the best lessons are ones where STT is maximized.Getting students to speakto use the language they are learningis a vital part of a teacher"s job (Harmer, 2000 p. 4).
However, American scholar Wong Fillmore found out that success in SLA occurred in teacher-dominated class.There are times that in classroom in which the teacher can serve as the main source of input, the learners can receive enough and accurate input.Thus, Fillmore argued the amount of TT should not be decreased blindly.

Teachers' Questions
Questioning is one of the most common techniques used by teachers (Richards & Lockhart, 2000) and serves as the principal way in which teachers control the classroom interactions.The tendency for teachers to ask many questions has been observed in many investigations (Chaudron, 1988).In some classrooms, over half of class time is taken up by question and answer exchanges (Richards & Lockhart, 2000).
The pervasiveness of teacher questions in the classroom can be explained by the specific functions they perform.These functions can be grouped into three broad areas (Donald & Eggen, 1989): 1. diagnostic: allow teachers to glimpse into the minds of students to find out not only what they know or don"t know but also how they think about a topic.2. instructional: questions provide students learn new material and integrate it with the old one, provide the practice and feedback essential for the development 3. motivational : allow teachers to engage with students actively in the lesson at hand, challenging their thinking and posing problems for them to consider.Barnes (1969) examined the questions asked by teachers and classified them into four types: "What" questions, "How" and "Why" questionopen and closed questions.Meanwhile, Richards & Lockhart (2000) classify the questions into three categories in terms of the purpose of questions in classroomprocedural, convergent, and divergent.Procedural questions have to do with classroom procedures and routines and classroom management.Convergent and divergent questions are designed to engage students in the content of lesson, to facilitate comprehension, and to promote classroom interaction.Convergent questions encourage similar student responses, or responses which focus on a central theme, such as "short answers" -"yes" or "no" or "short statements".They do not require students to engage in highlevel thinking.On the contrary, divergent questions encourage diverse student responses which require higher-level thinking.
However, the question types used in this study is one proposed by Long and Sato (1983), "display" and "referential" questions.Display questions used when teachers know the answers and designed to elicit or display particular structures.For example, "what's the opposite of up in English?' .Referential questions, though, refer to the questions that teachers do not know the answers to, and can gain various subjective information.For example, "Why don't you do your homework?' Closed questions and convergent questions have the same feature as referential questions, so are open questions and divergent questions.Research results proved that teachers tend to ask more display questions than referential questions (Long & Sato, 1983;Pica & Long, cited from Ellis, 1994).
Either positive or negative feedback is teachers" evaluation of the student response (Cook, 2000), given by means of praise, by any relevant comment or action, or by silence (Richards, & Lockhart, 2000).Weinstein (1989) found that children learned how "smart" they were mainly from teachers" feedback in the form of marks, comments, and the degree and type of praise and criticism.(Wheldal and Merrett, 1987) cite a large number of studies showing that rewards such as praise, are far more effective than punishment.Within this situation, learners begin to develop their "Positive Thinking", which they claim to be highly effective (Wheldal and Merrett, 1984).Feedback has two main distinguishable components: Correction and Assessment (Ur, 2000 p. 242).
Since learners will inevitably make mistakes in the process of learning, Brown (2002 p. 205) says that " A learner"s errors … are significant in (that) they provide to the researcher evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in the discovery of the language."" It is a vital part of the teacher"s role to point out students" mistakes and provide correction.In correction, some specific information is provided on aspects of the teacher"s performance, through explanation, or provision of better or other alternatives, or through elicitation of these from the learner (Ur, 2000).Correction helps students to clarify their understanding of meaning and construction of language.Basically, it is worth praising learners for their success and correct them when they fail.
Assessment refers to the tools, techniques and procedures for collecting and interpreting information about what learners can and cannot do.In assessment, learners are simply informed how well or badly he or she has performed.Comments such as "Excellent" and "Very good" are commons at the end of a written assignment (Ur, 2000).One vital part is that teachers must not forget that assessment is given with one purpose, that is to help and promote EFL learning.Therefore, teacher"s talk should be full of approval and encouragement besides confirmation (Xiaoyan, 2006).

METHODOLOGY
This descriptive study employs both quantitative and qualitative designs in order to find deeper knowledge and understanding of teacher talk used by EYL teachers at the fourth grade of one International Elementary School in Bandung.Thus, the participants were the 3 English native speakers and 18 students there.
The qualitative data were taken from teachers and students" questionnaire and interview.Besides, the Teacher Observation Sheet, field notes, classroom observations, audio and video recording were also utilized.The quantitative data were taken from the questionnaire scores presented in the percentage.All data were calculated, coded, categorized, transcribed, interpreted, described, and presented in the forms of tables and graphs.
To analyze the data from the questionnaire, the researcher designed a students" questionnaire adapted from Richards & Lockhart (1994 p. 20) (see appendix) to collect information on language students" assessment about their English classes and their teachers" speech on the basis of their usual, normal activities.As for teachers" questionnaire, Likert Scale (strongly agree, agree, …… strongly disagree) will be used.All answers of all items on the questionnaire checked and recapitulated based on the teacher and the students" responses.
Then, the scores are calculated and summed up.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
The Participants Data From the data collected, it is revealed that 2 of three participants age (67%) are between 20 -30 years old and only one participant whose age is above 30.The data result also shows that 2 of the participants, that is 67%, graduated from English department in England universities.One participant graduated from engineering faculty in Australia.

Target Language Observation Scheme of the Participants
During the class observation, the researcher observed the teachers" performance and complete the categories listed in the Target Language Observation Scheme (see the appendix) , then the results were categorized and interpreted before they were displayed in a result table, shown in the percentage .The table above shows that most of the teachers use English 100% since they are real native speakers, which encourages students to talk in the target language.The use of second language, that is Indonesian, for those three native speakers, is null percent since they are not allowed to talk in Indonesian within the school environment.This situation is very beneficial for young learners to acquire the target language automatically because they use and are faced to the target language most of the time.The use of audio-visual is very high too, that is 100%.This shows that the three teachers have already been able to make use of the technology skills.
Gestures and humour are also employed in class to support the teaching-learning situation (67%).Most of the TTT used in class is so high.This is in line with Ellis (1985 p. 43) saying that successful outcomes may depend on the type of language used by the teacher and the type of interactions occurring in classroom.Specifically for Indonesian young learners, where the circumstance outside the class doesn"t support them to use the target language in daily conversation, class becomes an ideal place for them to learn English since it allows them to be in continuous contact with the teachers who speak in the target language, therefore TT should be employed very high.67% (2 teachers) also taught giving explicit lesson structure, but one teacher (33%), I noticedfailed since she lacked the ability for controlling the class.One teacher was very unclear, again, because she couldn"t control the class well.Her class was so noisy and the students talked by themselves, ignored her instructions and gave not related comments.Doe to the positive reinforcement, the 3 teachers (100%) got extremely high point -4.It shows to us that they have already understood the importance of positive reinforcement to build up their learning motivation.And 2 teachers (67%) were successful to avoid using negative reinforcement, while one teacher (33%) failed avoiding using it since she threatened the class so many times when the students disobeyed her.

Appropriate -t (min)
Less than 20 20 -25 25 -30 30 -35 From the raw and percentage results of questionnaire, we can see that most students, that is 12 out of 18 (67%) believe that the appropriate TTT should be less than 25 minutes, and according to the class teacher"s information, most of them are smart and active students.This shows that they prefer being given more activities and chances to get involved in the class.Some other 6 students (33%) still feel not too confident to talk in English, that"s why they need their teachers to talk more in class.

Table 3
The Results of the Questionnaire Questions with high points Question 3 : I like to listen to teacher"s instruction.Question 5 : I like to be asked and answer the questions in class.Question 6 : I like the teacher to give us some problems to work on.Question 10 : I like to be encouraged by teacher"s praise.Question 12 : I like the teacher to let me find my mistake.Question 13 : I like to be pointed immediately when my answers are incorrect Question 15 : I like to be given more chances to talking and discussing in class.Question 16 : I like teachers to negotiate with me for correction.
The students" questionnaire consists of 17 questions, and from the data collected, there were 8 questions that got very high points, while the others didn"t get good responses from the student participants.Since the eight questions are designed in terms of one particular behavior, the height of each bar shows the number of subjects who prefer it.These language behaviors, which have reached over 50% percentage of subject students" satisfaction will definitely indicate the majority preferences.The followings are the summary of those behaviors and events which are welcomed by the subject students in their classroom learning.From the histogram data above, we can make a conclusion that most of the students (since all the questions above got over 50% points) prefer their teachers minimize their TT and give them more initiation to get involved in class.The class observation conducted by the researcher showed that the more TT used by teachers in class, the less motivated the students were.They became sleepy, lazy and reluctant.I noticed that the class taught by T1 was so lively.T1 minimized her TT and replaced it with so many games and activities so the students didn"t realize that they actually were learning by playing.I saw that all the students in her class enthusiastically participated in every activities given by the teacher.Meanwhile, the other two classes seemed so boring for the students.This strengthened the idea that TT should be minimized.

Table 5 -The Features of TT (Teacher Talk)
The Features of TT Teachers Amount The table above shows that there was an attempt from each teacher to employ many kinds of TT features.Most of them have already used warm-up chats, direct instructions, indirect instructions, directions for activities, transitions, feedback and checking understanding.

Warm
Table 6 reveals that there is a preference of display questions over referential questions in the class under this investigation.Though each teacher participant varies in many aspects, they share the similarities in the use of display questions.They ask the questions and students try to answer or explain since the use of display question is mainly on eliciting students" responses or productions.Display question is used for the following purposes: to check or test understanding, knowledge or skill; to get learners to review and practice previous materials.These kind of questions don"t stimulate higher level of thinking.According to Swan"s output hypotheses mentioned in chapter 2, teachers" questions cannot help the students learn effectively.Having been discussed earlier, teachers are expected to use inferential questions over display questions since these questions -employing "why" and "how" question wordswill reveal students" deeper knowledge and understanding.Referential questions are beneficial to the development of students" communicative competence, thus teachers have to use these much more display questions.In EFL classrooms, teachers always let students answer the questions in four ways: 1) norminating; 2) chorus-answering; 3) volunteering; and 4) teacher-self answering.According to the students" questionnaire results, question number 3 and 5 got 60 and 80 % points.This shows that most students like to answer questions actively.A large number of students prefer volunteering.But the data above shows that teachers used norminating over the other ways.Too much norminating actually will make students become more passive, but volunteering, on the other hand , also needs students" high proficiency and will make others who are slow learners unable to show their competence.Most of the time, EFL teachers¸ in order to save the time, answered the questions by themselves .Fortunately, the teacher participants here never did that, shown from the result which was null since this is not a suggested way.Self answer can only create students who are more dependant to their teachers.Table 8 shows there are two assessments commonly made by teachers, the positive and the negative assessment.As we can see, short praises were mostly used, with the total 11 points and 34 percentage.Negative assessments were used only by T3 (31%) since she couldn"t control the class well.The findings here might suggest that students will receive more effective feedback which will increase their motivation and encourage them in using the target language if teachers employ more positive assessments in the classroom.In this part, the researcher tried to investigate four ways of treating students" errors, namely explicit corrections, asking another student to answer instead, providing a clue and expecting self-repair, and ignoring and correcting later.The results that the frequency of explicit correction is high.It is used significantly more often than the other three methods of error treatment.Unfortunately, "ignoring and correcting later" was not used at all, in fact, this strategy is good since it gives more time to the students to make sense of their mistakes.Generally speaking, teacher"s immediate and explicit corrections can breed a dependency relationship between teacher and learners, and this will inhibit them from elaborating further and developing exercises that foster progress and thus inhibit learner"s attempts at using the target language.
The research findings show that there were some gaps between the students" expectation and preference and the teachers" perception of what the students want which make students feel less enthusiastic in learning the target language.We can see from the students" questionnaire that students demanded they would be given more freedom to talk and participate in classroom activities.Meanwhile, from the teachers" perspectives, the best method is believed to be grammar translation method in which teachers become the centre who always explain everything to their students.Seeing this phenomena, I see a willingness nowadays to make use of TT in classroom settings.Due to the SLA occurring naturally among young learners, TT should be employed high in classroom since it helps young learners to get more target language exposure, as well as considering their teachers as the target language models.
It is a fact that some teachers believe that the lesson must be full with their talk explaining and delivering all knowledge to students, which shows that 80% of the talk in the class is dominated by teacher talk.But on the other hand, there are also some teacher and so many researches that have proved the less teachers talk, the more students talk, the better.They argue that teachers then have to shift from a "teacher" to a "student" centered mode.Teachers have to encourage some kind of group-work or pair work, or some other techniques through which teachers can "elicit" comments from them.
The focus of the TT now is not again on "how much time do teachers spend talking?" but rather "How do teachers talk?" .TT must be employed many kinds of TT features such as how to interrupt, comment, ask for clarification, give positive assessments, to correct students" errors with the purpose to engage students" attention and understanding in the class as well as increasing their motivation in learning the target language so as to be qualified and successful language users.
For young learners, "good input" and that "negotiated input" is very essential."Negotiated input" -kind of conversation, talk or formal teaching in which the teacher and the student or students together "negotiate" both what they are talking about and the language that is used to talk about it -is always essential.Students "negotiate" by showing whether they understand or not, by asking questions, by showing through body-language, facial expression and verbal means whether they are interested or not, whether they want to hear more, whether or not they are getting tired, or find the input too difficult.The person providing the inputthe parent, the native-speaker friend or companion talking to the non-native speaker who is struggling with the L2or whoever happens to be the "input provider" at the time negotiates by being sensitive to these signals and adjusting the input accordingly.That, at least is one way in which we as teachers can "negotiate meaning"to use a phrase which is always suspected of concealing more than it revealswith our students.In this case, the use of TT"s in classroom settings become so crucial as young learners take their EFL teachers as their target language models and they imitate their models from time to time.Young learners are faced with target language exposure all the time through TT employed in their classrooms, thus EFL teachers must be very cautious in choosing the most appropriate features of TT to successfully gain the learning objectives.
In conclusion, generally TT should be minimized, however, the phenomena in young learners classrooms is different from other classrooms in a way that TT must still be employed to help young learners to model their EFL teachers.Thus, this study suggests EFL teachers dealing with young learners to gain more knowledge of TT to become more professional teachers.

CONCLUSION
This study was just a small-scale exploration and the findings may reveal partial views of classroom research, nevertheless, the researcher still expects it can give insight to the Indonesian EFL learners, especially when dealing with young learners, besides promoting the awareness of teachers in using their language in classrooms.
The data analysis and interpretative analysis of the outcomes acquired brings this research into the following findings: 1.There is a students" trend nowadays to minimize the TT.This was proved by the students" questionnaire which showed that over 50% of the students expected to be involved more in the class activities, however, the classes investigated were mostly dominated by teachers domination.The researcher noticed that only T1 that had an attempt to employ interesting and motivating activities.It is normally expected to move from Teacher-centered to student-centered, but this study was conducted towards young learners, so there is a different phenomena.Quite a lot of the students investigated, in fact, also expected more TT when learning the target language.For those students, teacher talk serves as the most valuable input of language exposure due to the circumstance in Indonesia that doesn"t support students to use the target language in daily conversation.TT, then, becomes a significant model for them to acquire the target language.
2. The study also suggested EFL teachers to use of the target language as much as possible since it gives lots of exposure to young learners to imitate their models.Since the participants investigated in this study were all English native speakers, there was no doubt that they always employed their first language in the classrooms and only allowed the students to use their target language.This contributes a lot of progress in the improvement of students" target language.Good learner performance depends on the teacher: "Errors in the input may be "acquired" by listeners" (Krashen, 1985 p. 9)."The purpose of language teaching in a sense is to provide optimal samples of language for the learner to profit from -the best "input" to the process of language learning.Everything the teacher does provide the learner with opportunities for encountering the language (Cook, 2000 p. 129).Thus, EFL teachers should focus on improving their quality of TT, especially when teaching young learners.
3. The study also found out that the teachers investigated were quite creative in using many kinds of TT features, that is: warm-up chats, direct instructions, indirect instructions, direction for activities, transitions, giving feedback and checking understanding.The use of these features will avoid the monotonous situation in classrooms.It will help students get deeper knowledge and insight of the subjects learned.
4. TT has a power to bring different effects towards the students: positive feedback can create a warm, encouraging and motivating classroom atmosphere; referential questions can increase critical thinking of students, encourage them to be more autonomous learners that have bravery in expressing their minds and thoughts as well as leading them to produce more complex, meaningful sentences, thus they can surely gain much higher language proficiency.So, EFL teachers are also suggested to know more about TT and choose the most appropriate forms consciously to avoid students" boredom.
5. The use of positive assessments like giving praises is very effective in encouraging and motivating young learners to learn the target language.The findings revealed that all the teachers investigated always tried to give positive assessments, but unfortunately, they never used short praises followed by appraisals.Basically, this way of method is the best, so it is suggested that EFL teachers use it more often over the other ways of method.
6.The students" questionnaire clearly showed that the students expected their teachers to correct their error.We can see from the findings that the teachers investigated used explicit error most of the time.This can make students more passive and dependent on their teachers since they just have to wait for their teachers" answers.In the future, EFL teachers have to make us of "ignoring and correcting error later", which absolutely will build up

Table 4 -Amount of Teacher Talk and the percentage in the total class time
Note: "Other activities" refers to the classroom activities such as dictation, reading the text silently, writing in classrooms, in which neither teachers not students need to speak.