Constructive Suggestions Toward Communicative Classroom English in the Teacher Guidebooks of Primary English Textbooks

Teacher talk is of crucial importance for language learning especially in EFL classrooms since it is likely the major source of comprehensible input the learners are exposed to. As such, classroom English provided in the teacher guidebooks as a model for teacher talk needs to be scrutinized in terms of its quality. This study aims to examine the quality of teacher talk provided in the teacher guidebooks to determine if the provided language is suitable as a model of teacher talk, and to suggest the ways as to how it could be improved. The guidebooks under analyses included those of grades 3, 4, 5, and 6 by the four author groups who had published textbooks for all four grade levels. They were examined with regard to four conditions of teacher talk: comprehensibility, linguistic appropriateness, authenticity, and richness of input. The results showed that the teacher guidebooks were providing classroom English samples of fairly good quality, but they still demonstrated weaknesses to be improved. Some samples were long-winded, linguistically inappropriate, not authentic in terms of interactional patterns, and oversimplified in that series of fixed expressions appear repeatedly regardless of lessons and grade levels. This study suggests that classroom English in the teacher guidebooks needs to be elaborated to the extent that they fulfill the conditions for good quality of input. Specific samples are provided to demonstrate how comprehensibility, authenticity, appropriateness, and richness of input can be attained in teacher talk.