On Questioning In College English Major Classes

Classroom questioning is a necessary segment for the teachers to organize the classroom activities. Thus, teachers'questioning has always been the focus of research attention in language classrooms of foreign language teaching for many years. Yet, it was not until in the late 1990s the researchers at home began to make empirical studies on College English teachers'classroom questioning. Those empirical studies primarily focus on teachers'questioning behaviors, inclusive of the types of questions and the frequency, wait time and feedback, with scanty discussion about students'expectation towards teachers'questioning as well as their assessment of teachers'questioning. In view of previous researchers'inspiration, the present study attempted to research teacher questioning from the aspects of types, strategies, implementation and students'expectation towards teachers'questioning as well as their assessment of teachers'questioning to analyze and discuss the effective way of improving students'learning of Comprehensive English.The subjects involved in this research were four randomly selected comprehensive English teachers, together with their students, in which two of them are from senior grades and two are from junior grades. In the process of investigating, four classes taught by four different teachers were observed and recorded and then the interview with each of those teachers was conducted. The related questionnaires were distributed to 39 teachers and 125 students for getting further information. The purposes of this study are as follows: 1)To investigate how many questions the senior and junior teachers ask in an average class; and what form of question takes in relation to being open/ closed, display/ referential, convergent/ divergent and high-level/ low-level; 2)To discover what types of questions are usually used in different teaching phases of senior grades and junior grades; 3)To find out which strategies teachers use and how to use them to elicit answers, which is one of the field that the previous researchers didn't concern about; 4)To understand different lengths of wait time may bring about different effects on students; 5)To understand students'expectation of teachers'questioning as well as students'assessment of teachers'questioning.Based on the results of the transcript analysis, interviews and questionnaires, the findings were summarized as follows:1) Comprehensive English teachers ask approximately 53 questions in an average class (40 minutes). This includes many instances of individual questions being repeated and redirected to other students. Ignoring the nonlearning-centered procedural questions, the total questions asked in each of the senior-grade classes are approximately 50.5 and in the junior-grade classes, 52 questions are asked. In comparison, the ratio of closed questions of junior grades is higher than that of senior grades. Whereas, display questions make up 62% and 69% while convergent questions make up 73% and 78% respectively in the senior-grade and junior-grade classes. The last, high-level questions are asked more than low-level ones in senior-grade classes.2) In the presentation phase, the most common used question type"open +referential + convergent"tends to be asked more by the teachers of senior grades; whereas, the teachers of junior grades would like to ask"closed +display + convergent"questions. In the production phase, the most common used question type"open +referential + divergent"tends to be asked more by the teachers of both senior grades and junior grades. In the practice phase, the most common used question type"closed +display"tends to be asked more by the teachers of senior-grade classes and also junior-grade ones, also, convergent and divergent questions are seldom asked.3) Fewer teachers may pay attention to or apply diverse questioning strategies in accordance with the teaching contents or students'levels in the class.4) With the issue of wait-time research in class, most teachers had formed a habit of not giving their students enough time (less than 5 seconds) or related tips to prepare for the responses to questions.5) Students of both senior and junior grades present different feedbacks to teacher's questioning in different learning phases.The thesis consists of six parts. Chapter One is a brief introduction to the whole thesis, discussing the origin and significance of the present study. Chapter Two presents a review of literature on the previous studies of classroom questioning behavior conducted in China and abroad, which illustrates the related theoretical basis about classroom questioning such as its types, functions, strategies and so on. Chapter Three mainly describes the research design and procedures. Chapter Four provides detailed description and analysis of the research results of classroom questions. We can see the related findings, discussions and suggestions in Chapter Five; Chapter Six serves as conclusions.