A Study Of Foreign And Chinese Teachers' Questioning In EFL Classrooms

Teacher questioning has long been an important means in English classroom teaching. It comes to play a more and more significant role in the popuar student-centered and theme-based teaching mode. By teacher questioning, "teachers can not only involve students into interaction, but also encourage students to modify his own language and make it comprehensible" (Riehards&Loekhart, 1996:185). For better questioning, many researchers have worked on teacher questioning and questioning behaviour. The present study focuses on questioning of both foreign teachers and Chinese teachers, in an attempt to make an investigation of the current situation of teacher questioning in EFL classroom, aims to promote the communication between foreign and Chinese teachers in teaching experience and provide reference for those new college English teachers.Taking Krashen's comprehensible input, Michael Long's interaction hypothesis and Swain's ouptput hypothesis as theory base, the present study makes an investigation of the current situation in five fundamental aspects, question types, question modification, wait-time, teachers' feedback and question distribution, by means of class observation, questionnaire and interview, in an expectation to learn from each other and put forward some constructive suggestions to contribute to the development of second language teaching.The result reveals the following features in teacher questioning:Firstly, both foreign teachers and Chinese teachers ask more display questions than referential questions; but foreign teachers ask four times more referential questions than Chinese teachers.Secondly, as far as question modification is concerned, both Chinese teachers and foreign teachers vary their strategies to aid students in repairing their errors, stimulating their thinking, motivating them to participate more into classroom activities. But among the strategies, Chinese teachers use prompting most; foreign teachers employ probing most.Thirdly, both foreign and Chinese teachers wait longer after asking referential questions than display questions. But obviously, foreign teachers wait longer than Chinese teachers after these two question types.Fourthly, both foreign and Chinese teachers give students more postive feedback than negative feedback; and when students give a wrong answer, both of them prefer to guide student to self-repair first.Fifthly, in question distribution, foreign teachers nominate students all the time with a pile of name cards; Chinese teachers are more flexible. In the revision part, they nominate students; in text anylysis part, they ask students to respond in chorus mainly, with an implement by volunteer.After anylysis and discussion, refering to questioning strategies in these five aspects, some suggestions are proposed, such as, Chinese teachers should make a shift from the emphasis of linguistic knowledge to communicative competence; both foreign and Chinese teachers should take affective factors into consideration in questioning, trying to lower affective factors like nervousness, anxiety and inhibition in language learners by giving proper feedback and longer wait-time; foreign teachers should learn more about students' linguistic competence and personality type and adjust the object of questioning accordingly.Based on previous researches, the present disseration makes an anylysis of the current situation of questioning. The difference lies in the subjects of the study are both foreign and Chinese teachers. It is belived that the true data collection and analysis will provide reference to the coming teachers and scholars.