英语论文网

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Research Background
English is such a strong integrated subject that it requires teachers and students'tacit cooperation for the students to learn it better. The relationship between teachersand students plays a vital role in this s ubject. It is not uncom mon for middle schoolstudents in China to complain about their English teachers. One of the most importantreasons that students cannot get high scores is that they do not like their Englishteachers. Even they know the answers during the test and exam s, they hardly writeanything down on purpose. As a consequence, teachers face a much greater challengein their teaching. On the one hand, they are required to be authoritative to convincethe students; on the other hand, they need to get along well with their students tocreate a more harmonious learning atmosphere. It is quite challenging.As suggested by Bolkan and Goodboy ( 2011), in order to create a positiv elearning atmosphere, teachers need to be competent in social interaction as well as intheir subject area. This emphasizes the fact that effective teaching requires instructorsto effectively manage the interaction between the academic and social dimensions ofthe classroom (Walker, 2009), which in turn requires a relational approach to teachingand effective interpersonal communication skills (Graham, West & Schaller, 1992).Recently, teacher immediacy has become the focus of research stud ies because of itsimportance in forming an effective teaching learning environment especially in th efield of effective English learning. English teacher immediacy plays an important partin teaching and learning.
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1.2 Research Purpose and Significance
As we all know, interest is the best teacher. Classroom efficiency plays a crucialrole in students’ English learning. It is crucial to inves tigate the relationship betweenteacher immediacy and student in terest and class engagement in middle schools inChina for several reasons.Many western researchers have studied teacher immediacy, but comparatively alimited number has been found in China, especially English teacher immediacy.However, some researchers in China mainly concentrate on the contrastive analysis ofthe teacher immediacy cross culture, som e other researchers study how to i mproveteacher immediacy. Some studies, which were made in middle schools, imply moretheoretical methods to im prove teacher's immediacy without quantification. Fewstudies focus on the middle school English teacher and students. Therefore, studies on middle school English teacher immediacy require further exploration.In the past, previous res earches on teacher immediacy in western coun try wereconducted by experiments. Usually , the teacher taught the sam e lesson in twodifferent ways by changing the teacher's verbal immediacy and nonverbal immediacy.Then students finished the questionnaires which contained different aspects of teacherimmediacy. Most of the experiments were conducted in colleges. In considerations ofthe immature features of middle school students, they cannot pay enough attention tothe teacher's little changes and this investigation just studied on teachers in differentclasses by questionnaires.Students are able to better understand content knowledge when the teacher hasstrong immediacy. Students have strong ince ntives to work harder when they knowthat teachers are more readily accessible and approachable. Effectiv