Teacher talk in the holistic english class of young learners at Wima Kids Surabaya

In teaching and learning process, a teacher takes important roles. He/she does a lot of things in the classroom and most of her activities are talking, that is communicating verbally with the students in his/her effort to present and discuss the teaching and learning materials as clearly as possible. The teacher’s verbal communication or teacher talk enables the various classroom activities to happen. This includes the teacher’s explanations, responses to questions, instructions, praises, corrections, etc (Wajnryb, 1992). Realizing the importance of the functions of teacher talk, the writer decided to choose Teacher Talk, especially teacher talk in teaching young learners as her topic under study. In line with the introduction, the research questions raised in this study are: What kinds of teacher talk are used by the teacher in the holistic English class at Wima Lids? And What are the linguistic features of teacher talk in the holistic English class at Wima Kids? This study applies the qualitative research design. The data of this study are gained by doing observations in the field. The type of observations done was a non-participant observation. The writer sat at the back of the classroom, observed, recorded the teacher’s talk secretly, and filled in the relevant checklist. Using FIAS to analyze the data, she found out the kinds of teacher talk at Wima Kids Surabaya are divided into two parts, indirect and direct teacher talk. The indirect influence consists of “accepts feeling, praises or encourages, accepts or uses ideas, and asks questions”. While direct influence consists of “lectures, gives directions, and criticizes or justifies authority”. And the linguistic features of teacher talk used by the teacher are one-word sentences, two-word sentences, three-word sentences and full sentences. The findings suggest that the Indirect Teacher Talk took up the major portion of teacher talk in the holistic English class at Wima Kids. Indirect Teacher Talk refers to the teacher intentionally deciding to let the students to respond in their own way and encourage them to do so. And most of the teacher speeches are used full sentences to respond or initiate. It is a good fact that teacher almost always used full sentences to communicate with her students. The sentences can be good model for the students to master the use of the language learning appropriately