4.3.1 The Distinction of English Learning Motivation among Students 13

  4.3.2 The Distinction of English Learning Competence among Students 14

5 Implications for Enhancing Learning Equity in EFL Classes 14

5.1 Change the instructional model from teacher-centered to students-centered 14

5.2 Concern the fairness of learning opportunities distribution among students 15

5.3 Improve the types of students’ classroom discourse 15

6 Conclusion 16

Reference 17

Appendix 1    Modeling Transcription: Class A 19

Appendix 2    Modeling Transcription: Class B 24

Appendix 3    Modeling Transcription: Class C 27

Appendix 4    Modeling Transcription: Class D 30

Appendix 5    Questionnaire on classroom discourse 33

Appendix 6    Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMTB) 34

1 Introduction

With the sustainable development of economic globalization and cultural integration, the communications among different nations, especially English-speaking countries, are becoming increasingly important. Directing at such circumstances, China now are paying more attention to enhancing students’ English competences to response to the internationalization. 

New English Curriculum advocates quality education and all-round learning and English education in middle schools is of vital significance as students are at a critical period of building foundation and confidence in learning this language. Besides, students in middle schools are both physically and mentally active and good at imitating as well as creating, so what they need is to be provided enough opportunities and encouraged to use English more in real communication.

However, calls for more school instructional time are coming from multiple quarters in China. Schools find themselves “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” taking time from every possible school programs, including the arts, physical education and other perse school activities to give more teaching time to compulsory courses including English classes. But does simply increasing the amount of time spent on specific subjects result in more learning opportunities for students? The answer is disappointing. 

Focusing on the confusion of the English learning situation in China’s middle schools, the research aims to discover what the current situation of language learning opportunities in EFL classes is and what influences the equality of English classes from the perspective of classroom discourse. The research will discuss this issue from following aspects, including the features of discourse interaction in EFL classes, affecting factors of language learning unfairness and the learning results under the unfair learning environment. In addition, the research will also come up with suggestions both for teachers and students to improve learning equality and efficiency in EFL classes.

2 Literature Review 

Many researchers have tried to excogitate or develop the models of classroom processes to offer the visual aid to teaching and learning by getting good command of the variables in the processes. The models, broadly speaking, include perse formulas and diagrams intended to give an understanding of the variables associated with school learning and among them, the fairly contributing ones are Carroll’s (1963), Proctor’s (1984), Cruickshank’s (1985), and Huitt’s (1995).