An Investigation On Teachers' Questioning In English Classes Of Junior Middle Schools

Since early 1970s, the approach of communicative language teaching has become more and more popular. One of its major principles is that students are taught for the purpose of communication, and the class is characterized by classroom interaction between the teacher and the students and among students themselves. The effectiveness of this approach is mainly determined by the function of the teacher in classroom. Otherwise the function of the teacher in classroom is mainly realized through the teacher's talking. During the teacher's talking, questioning is a vital aspect. Teachers at different levels ask numerous questions to their students. And the question-and-answer sessions occupy a great deal of time. This dissertation is to study teachers' questioning in English classes of junior middle schools. The qualitative study would provide valuable rules and approaches of questioning to help the teachers make a more effective English class.It is necessary for us to make an analysis of the relevant researches about teaching before we explore the questioning. From the various definitions and explanations of language, we infer some basic features of language, such as "systematic", "arbitrary", "for communication", "generative", "creative" and so on. Among these features, "communication" is regarded as the most important and essential one. It also means that "communication" is the ultimate goal of language. During communication, there is always a speaker and a hearer, and there is always a desire for successful communication both from the point of view of the speaker and the hearer. In most communicative activities, people act as both senders and receivers. In fact, this is a kind of interaction. In language teaching classroom, students will benefit a lot and achieve great progress through this interaction. However, the effectiveness of the interaction is determined by the roles of the teachers. No doubt the teachers perform the roles through their talking in most cases. Therefore, questioning is an important part in teachers' talking and it is an effective device to serve educative purpose in classroom.Based on the reasons above, it is necessary for teachers to make attention to the theoretical analyses of questioning. Thus the teachers can use the theoretical views to lead the practical questioning. In fact, questioning used by teachers exists lots of problems. Therefore, this dissertation wants to find out some enlightenment through the investigation.