A Study On The Effectiveness Of English Teacher’s Classroom Questioning

The New English Curriculum Standard for General High School(2017 Edition,2020 Revision)pointed out that English teaching in high school needed to cultivate students’ language competence,cultural awareness,thinking quality,learning competence,and other core competencies.Therefore,English teaching in high school has to meet higher quality requirements.In order to realize the objectives proposed in the new curriculum standard,the effectiveness of teaching must be improved.The classroom is the first step to improve teaching effectiveness.Moreover,classroom questioning is a vital teaching method and an essential link between teachers and students.Effective classroom questioning can attract students’ attention as well as stimulate students’ thinking.Therefore,teachers’ effective classroom questioning plays an essential role in cultivating students’ core competencies and improving the quality of teaching.This thesis investigates the effectiveness of classroom questioning by English teachers in a senior high school in Yibin City.The main research questions of this study are:1.What is the teachers’ understanding of the effectiveness of classroom questioning?2.What are the characteristics of the content of English teachers’ questioning and questioning skills in English classes?3.What strategies can be used to improve the effectiveness of English teachers’ classroom questioning?This study selects four English teachers in a public high school in Yibin City to explore and analyze their English classroom questioning.And it is guided by Krashen’s Input Hypothesis,Swain’s Output Hypothesis,and Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.The author collected the content of questioning and questioning skills used by four English teachers in classes through classroom observation.At the same time,the author designed a questionnaire based on the classroom observation chart.After the reliability and validity test,it is used to understand the characteristics of teachers’ questioning in class from the student’s perspective.In addition,the interview for teachers was conducted to understand teachers’ understanding of the effectiveness of classroom questioning.The results showed that the four English teachers needed a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of classroom questioning.Firstly,teachers do not have a reasonable layout of questions of different cognitive levels.The classroom questioning needed to be balanced regarding the types of questions.Most of them focused on closed questions,while few open questions could promote the development of students’ thinking.Moreover,most questions asked students to recall or remember the knowledge,which required low cognition.Secondly,teachers’ questioning skills still need to be strengthened.The distribution of teachers’ classroom questioning was not balanced,and they tended to ask top students or students who voluntarily answered questions and took less care of the underachievers.Furthermore,the wait time for questioning was unreasonable.Given the above problems,this thesis put forward the following suggestions: firstly,teachers should strengthen the study of the theories of classroom questioning and actively integrate theories with practice;secondly,the design of questioning should be balanced;thirdly,teachers should design questions according to students’ different levels and enrich the content of questions;fourthly,teachers should balance the distribution of questions;fifthly,teachers should appropriately extend the wait time;sixthly,teachers should ask questions in a trusting,encouraging tone.Based on the results of this research,the author summarized the current characteristics of classroom questioning and put forward corresponding suggestions for problems,which provided some references for English teaching in high school,and also gave some data to support the in-depth research on the effectiveness of classroom questioning.