A Brief Review of the Studies of Teacher Talk in Second Language Classrooms

Abstract

This paper systematically reviews the studies of second language teacher talk in language classrooms firstly from the perspective of framework and then from three categories-linguistic function, medium-oriented function, procedural and regulative function. Next, a critical review of the relevant literature in China will be presented with the help of the tool Citespace. Through the comparison of studies at home and abroad, it is of significance to enhance the research in primary and secondary schools in China and consider the frameworks of teacher talk given by domestic authoritative scholars and look deep into teachers' discourse awareness and competence. Additionally, there are still many fields that researchers have not paid attention to, such as language selection and conversion, language ability, other time of teacher talk (play time; silence), lesson type (listening and speaking, reading and writing) etc.