A Case Study of Computer―based Teacher―Student Interaction outside Class.doc

A Case Study of Computer―based Teacher―Student Interaction outside Class 　　Abstract This case study examines the interaction through emails between a professor and one of his third-year students outside of the classroom to explore the problems in the teacher-student interaction. It shows that confronted with difficulties， the student turns directly to her teacher， yet failing to make her specific difficulties known， and the teacher spares no pains to exemplify the doing of assignments， yet knowing little about his students knowings and unknowings. At the end of the article are some enlightenments： seeking help after self-attempting and helping after knowing. Keywords teacher-student interaction； interaction 0 Introduction The teacher-student interaction is one of the frequent practices and plays a decisive role in teaching， especially language teaching. Since 1970 the Birmingham School， led by Sinclair， has started a systematic study of classroom language exchange， and proposed a typical structure of classroom discourse， Initiation-Response-Feedback （I-R-F）. The literature concerning second language acquisition and applied linguistics reveals that many studies on classroom interaction have been conducted， but comparatively， few research into the teacher-student interaction outsider classroom was done. Therefore， the electronic written interaction by email will be analyzed， aiming to explore the problems of the computer-based interaction outside classroom and produce some implications for English teaching. 1 Literature Review 1.1 Definition of interaction Since Georg Simmel， a German sociologist and philosopher， firstly used the term “social interaction” in his book Sociology， “interaction” became one of the important concepts in sociology， social psychology， education etc. The definition of interaction varies from scholar to scholar. Interaction refers to the mutual action or the reaction process between person and person or between group and gr