A Study On The Relationship Between Teachers’ Questioning Strategies And Students’ Participation In Senior High School English Classes

Classroom questioning is an important means for teachers to guide students to think actively according to teaching objectives and tasks,and to promote students’ ability of learning and development of their thinking.Classroom participation is the thinking activity of students in behavior,affection and cognition.Students participate in classroom learning equally under the condition for participation created by the teacher.With the implementation of the new curriculum reform,the teacher becomes the guider,instead of the dominant one,in classroom activities.The efficiency of a class largely depends on the teacher’s questioning strategy,which is also an important factor affecting students’ participation in class.The questioning strategy is a line that runs through the class,since there is no class without questions,which highlights the important value of questioning strategies in English teaching.However,there are still many problems in actual classroom teaching when the teacher applies the questioning strategy,such as inadequate preparation for questioning,improper design of questions(too easy or too difficult),teacher’s inadequate feedback to students’ answers,etc.Therefore,this paper aims to study how to improve students’ participation in class through teachers’ questioning strategy from the perspective of both teachers and students.By consulting the literature,the author finds that most of researches on the questioning strategy in high school English class focus on the types of questions,the timing of questions,the waiting time after questioning and the feedback to students’ answers.According Long and Sato,the types of questions are mainly classified into presentation questions and reference questions.Some scholars have studied the influence of students’ expectation on classroom questions and waiting time for teachers’ feedback on different question types.Based on previous researches,and through classroom observation,some suggestions are given from the perspective of both teachers and students to improve the participation of students in the classroom through teacher’s questioning.In this research,42 students from class 1,grade 2,in Songyuan Advanced Art School,are taken as subjects.During the teaching practice,the survey focuses on the following three questions:1.What are the types of classroom questioning by high school English teachersand what about Students’ participation in different types of questions?2.What factors influence students’ class participation?3.How to improve students’ participation in class by asking questions?By releasing the questionnaires to students and conducting interviews with teachers,the author collects the information about the current situation of classroom questioning in English subject in senior high school and the attitude and expectation of students to classroom questioning.The theoretical analysis framework of the research is developed on the basis of Krashen’s Understandable Input Hypothesis,Swain’s Understandable Output Hypothesis and Long’s Interactive Hypothesis.At the beginning,the author makes a preliminary understanding of the students’ and teachers’ attitudes and expectations towards the classroom questioning in high school English class through the questionnaire.Based on classroom observation,the author analyzes the influence of high school English teachers’ classroom questioning strategies on students’ classroom participation in terms of some factors,such as the waiting time and feedback after the presentation and modification of classroom questions.Then some interviews are made to learn the feedback of teachers and students,and finally all the data are classified and analyzed.The conclusions drawn from the research can be summarized into three points: Firstly,teachers’ reasonable and effective use of classroom questioning strategy can improve students’ participation and stimulate the interest in learning.Secondly,due to single classroom questions,the question design should be strengthened to stimulate students’ initiative to participate in the class and enhance their participation in the class.Thirdly,the factors that affect students’ participation in class include the lack of sufficient waiting time and feedback after classroom questioning.Teachers should also create a positive learning atmosphere to encourage students to participate actively during classroom interaction.