A Study On Teachers’ Questioning Types In English Reading Teaching In Junior High Schools

Questioning is a very vital and high-frequently used teaching technique to enhance the interaction between teachers and students,especially in reading classes.If teachers’ questioning is appropriate,students can understand the discourse better,develop their thinking skills and improve their communicative competency.Therefore the present study will focus on the characteristics of teachers’ questioning and its impact on students’ oral production.Based on the theories of Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive level,Long’s interactive hypothesis and Swain’s output hypothesis,ten reading classes in the Twelfth National Middle School English Demonstration Classes have been observed and analyzed.The study aims at exploring the following two research questions:1)What are the proportions and characteristics of different teachers’ questioning types in reading classes in junior high schools?2)What is the correlation between different teachers’ questioning types and students’ oral production in junior high schools’ reading classes?On the basis of the recording and analyzing of the classroom observation and transcriptions,the major findings of this study are as follows:1)Most of the observed teachers tend to post more display questions than referential questions,especially in pre-reading and while-reading stage,while referential questions outnumber display questions in post-reading stage.2)Most of the observed teachers prefer to raise more low-cognitive-level questions than high-cognitive-level questions in all three stages of reading class,especially remembering questions in pre-reading stage,understanding questions in while-reading and applying questions in post-reading stage.They seldom raise high-cognitive-level questions,especially evaluating questions and creating questions in pre-reading and while-reading stages.3)There is obvious influence of display questions and referential questions on students’ oral production.Referential questions can stimulate higher quality of oral production in students with more words and more complicated sentence structures,especially in post-reading stage.4)There is influence of Bloom’s six questioning types on students’ oral production,especially on the aspect of syntactic complexity.Finally,based on the findings,this study poses some pedagogical implications forEnglish teachers in junior high schools.