An Analysis of the Characteristics of Teacher Talk on MOOCs Based on Interpersonal Function: Take the "National Excellent Course" of English Writing as an Example

Great changes have occurred in the media with advancement of Internet technology, influencing the field of education. MOOCs, as a viable online teaching platform, not only helps to improve the university teaching level on a large scale, but also encourages many higher institutions to positively influence diverse audiences beyond the intellectual ivory tower by sharing their courses. Against such background, this paper selects Nankai University's MOOCs "Critical English Writing"as the research object, and uses 11 short videos from the first and second lectures, totaling 43 minutes and 45 seconds, as the research corpus, and transcribes the teacher talk in the videos as samples. Based on Halliday's theory of interpersonal function, this paper analyzes the use of mood, modality, and personal pronoun in this online course, as well as the speed and syntax of teacher talk. This paper attempts to investigate the discourse strategies of teacher talk in an online classroom and provides corresponding suggestions based on the findings. In practice, teachers' talk plays a vital role in the English classroom. In a network English teaching context, only by giving full play to the interpersonal function of teacher talk and establishing an equal and harmonious classroom atmosphere can we achieve a student-centered classroom and guide students to carry out effective language input and output in the interaction. From a macro perspective, this study puts forward suggestions for online English curriculum design, and identifies problems and improvement measures of teacher talk in the new classroom environment, in the hope of helping to promote and enhance the effectiveness of classroom teaching in MOOCs. To a certain extent, this paper can promote the effectiveness of teaching and communication strategies, improve the quality of online teaching in universities, and facilitate the development of English courses in MOOCs with distinctive features.