A Social Constructivist Approach To Teacher Questioning In Senior High School EFL Classes

It is a universally acknowledged fact that teacher talk plays a significant role in language teaching.In senior high school English classes,teacher talk is not only perceived as an effective teaching media but also a constructive teaching tool.Among all the teacher talk,teacher questioning occupies a large percentage(Leven & Long 1987)and is one of the most frequently applied teaching strategies(Freiberg & Driscoll 1996).As the most frequently-used interaction between students and teachers in English as foreign language(hereafter EFL)classes,teacher questioning helps arouse student's interest,stimulate interaction,organize the class and examine the student's understanding.Therefore,research concerning teacher questioning is drawing increasing attention.However,the previous researches on teacher questioning are often conducted from the perspective of psycholinguistics or second language acquisition(hereafter SLA),which indicates the necessity to investigate the pedagogical effects of teacher questioning on scaffolding assistance from a social constructivism perspective.Aiming to investigate the current situation of teacher questioning in senior high school English classes and figure out how teacher questioning benefits the classroom interaction and scaffolds students' language development,the present study makes an empirical investigation on teacher questioning by using the methods of observation and data analysis based on previous research findings of teacher questioning and social constructivism at home and abroad.This thesis conducted a classroom video observation on eight outstanding senior high school English teachers who attended the National High-Quality High School English Teaching Cases in 2016.The students who attended the classes were randomly selected from a senior high school of Chongqing where the competition was held.They are senior one students and the average size of each class is about 40 students.Eight classes(40 minutes for each class)were observed and transcribed.The study is designed to answer three research questions:(1)What is the frequency of display questions and referential questions used in senior high school EFL classroom?(2)What is the average wait time and the characteristic of the ways of answering questions?(3)What are the frequency and percentage of different questioning strategies and their pedagogical implications for scaffolding assistance during the classes?Through observation and data analysis,the main findings are as follows:(1)Display questions(81%)take predominant status in the classes with a lack of referential questions(19%).(2)The average wait time of the eight teachers is 4.6 seconds,which conforms to the suitable average wait time of 3-5 seconds advocated by Feldman(2003).In terms of the ways of answering questions,volunteering(46%)is the most frequently-used way by the eight teachers.Chorus answering accounts for 33% ranking second compared with teacher self-answering(10%),nominating(9%)and no answer(2%).Thus,the eights teachers make full use of various ways of answering questions to attract students' interests and facilitate a positive learning environment.(3)Of all the 662 questions raised in the eight classes,450 questions are posed with questioning strategies,which accounts for 65%.The eight teachers tend to modify questions with question strategies to provide scaffolding for students and help them to elicit the expected answers.Among the mainly five types of questioning strategies,probing,prompting,repeating,paraphrasing and redirecting,repeating(42%)and probing(24%)are the most frequent strategies in the eight classes.The eight teachers utilize scaffolding assistance to stimulate student's interest and make timely adjustments to the difficulty of the questions according to students' responses.The most frequently used scaffolding assistance is direction maintenance(49%).Next to direction maintenance is simplifying the task(19%).And then is recruitment(14%).Making critical features(8%),frustration control(6%)and demonstration(4%)are the least used scaffolding assistance in the eights classes.According to the findings of the research,a number of pedagogical implications are put forward to improve teacher questioning in senior high school English classes:(1)Reposition the function of teacher questions and increase the number of referential questions.(2)Change the teachers' unified leading position and train students' ability of posing questions.(3)Provide sufficient wait time.(4)Balance the allocation of questions.(5)Adopt scaffolding assistance to modify teacher questioning.