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f everything that goes on in the classroom. He controls not only what students do, but when they speak and what language they use; B. As manager, organizing the activities; C. As assessor, giving feedback and advice, as well correcting and grading; D. As participant (co-communicator) in an organized activity such as debate or role play; E. As prompter to encourage students to participate or make suggestions about how to proceed in an activity; F. As resource, that is a source of language and knowledge; G. As instructor, actually teaching the new language points and training students in language kills. It is quite obvious that a teacher plays multiple roles in class. Additionally, there are some more points worth noticing. Firstly, in communicative language teaching, the teacher is a facilitator of students whose role is less dominant than in a teacher-centered method (Widdowson, 1987). Secondly, the role of the teacher changes following the aims of the class. The teacher may function more as a controller if he is mainly doing presentation of new language points, whereas he is more of a resource or prompter or participant once a communicative activity starts. Thirdly, many things a teacher does in class may not belong to a single one role. The teacher may function as a prompter, an organizer, or a controller at the same time. From the above we know that teachers’ roles are diverse and dynamic (Widdowson, 1987). Most importantly we come to realize that all the roles must be performed in TT and TT is embedded in teachers’ multiple roles. The quality of TT must be consistent with teacher’ role. For instance, as an organizer, it is advisable for the teacher to speak the instructions clearly and concisely, otherwise, students cannot carry out the tasks. As a prompter and participant, the teacher should stimulate and prompt students with questions or uttering clues rather than providing direct answers. In a word, to investigate the roles of a teacher may be the basis of the analysis of TT. 3.2.2. Two Focal Issues in Interactive Teacher Talk (1)Teacher Question (TQ) in Teacher Talk TQ plays the great part in TT and has direct influence on students in the language classrooms. Barnes (1969, 1976) looked into TQ in detail and divided TQ into four types: (1) Factual questions, which is “what” questions; (2) Reasoning questions, which is “how” or “why” questions; (3) Open questions, which does not need reasoning; (4)Communicative questions, which is used to control or influence students’ behavior and activities. Barnes also divides the second type, reasoning questions, into two types: closed questions which have only one answer and it is fixed beforehand and open questions which allow more than one answer. Kearsley (1976) presented further division of TQ based on some conversation data. Following Kearsley, Long and Sato (1983) divided TQ into two types. The first is echoic questions, which ensure students' understanding by repetition of TT The other is epistemic questions, which are used to get information, including referential questions and display questions. Referential questions are mainly used to seek information, while display questions are used to examine the known information to ensure students' learning. According to the analysis of Long and Sato, the difference between referential questions and display questions is similar to that between closed questions and open questions (1983). Referential questions are inclin