Senior High School Students’ Perceptions toward the Importance of Teacher Talk

Teacher talk has an essential role in English classrooms. This study aims to figure out students’ perception of teacher-talk as spoken discourses produced by English teachers during the process of teaching and learning English. This descriptive study used a questionnaire to collect the data. The questionnaire was distributed to two classes in two schools in Aceh Besar. A total of 118 students responded to the questionnaire that was developed based on the Macrostructure Phases of Spoken Discourse. It consisted of eight questions asking about the senior high school students’ perception of spoken discourses in the form of teacher-talk during the process of teaching and learning English. All of the obtained data were analysed by using the percentage formula. The findings indicate that teacher-talk plays a pivotal role in the structing the classroom interaction, allowing students to follow the English teaching and learning process more easily. Additionally, teacher-talk also assisted with the students’ material understanding and learning engagement. Teacher talk was perceived to be essential in the classroom interaction, particularly in greeting students, introducing the lesson topic, explaining the subject matter, checking students’ understanding, providing examples, conducting evaluations, and concluding the lesson. However, the differences between the two schools were also found, in which teachers in School I were perceived to apply teacher talk more consistently than those in School II, particularly in providing examples, checking students’ understanding, and summarizing the lesson. This finding further emphasizes the pedagogical value of effective teacher-talk in the English classroom communication, especially to support the students’ learning experiences.