An Investigation of Students’ Face Wants in Chinese English Teachers’ Classroom Feedback

Abstract

In order to create a new teacher-student relationship and raise students’ politeness awareness and pragmatic competence in cross-cultural communication, this paper investigated and analyzed students’ face wants and English teachers’ awareness of students’ face want in their classroom feedback. The main data-gathering instruments are MP3-recording, non-participant observation, follow-up structured-interviews and closed- questionnaires. The results reveal that 60.6% of the teacher participants are frequently aware of their students’ face wants, and 27.2% of them are sometimes, while the other teachers seldom or never consider the students’ face want. Because of being influenced by the Chinese traditional culture in which teachers are superiors, not thoroughly understanding English Curriculum Standard which calls for human concern, and knowing a little about pragmatic theories, some Chinese English teachers ignore students’ face want. Suggestions on how to save students’ face want are put forward.