An Empirical Study On Teachers' Questioning In Senior High Schools

Arends (2005) points out during the past decade, researchers have continued to study the effects of question types on student achievement. The way teachers ask questions and the types of questions they ask have been the focus of considerable inquiry and concern for quite some time. In recent years, researchers both at home and abroad have conducted a series of study on classroom questioning from two levels of theory and practice. These researches focus on the frequency of display questions and referential questions, the questioning strategies, distribution of teachers'questions, wait-time when questioning, etc. But very few researchers have conducted a series of empirical study on teachers'questioning in senior high schools. However, the author's study centers its survey on English teachers'questioning in the senior high schools of our country. This thesis research and analyze an empirical study on three English teachers'questioning of senior high school.Teachers use questioning to stimulate thinking, assess student progress, promote interest, emphasize key points and start interaction with students. English teachers'questions also provide students with opportunities to find out what they think by what they say. This makes English teachers to manipulate the questioning behavior artfully. But in classroom teaching, the strategy of questioning can not be performed very well by teachers.The objectives of this study are to ask and answer questions in senior high school level courses, which focus on the following aspects: (1) the frequency of display questions and referential questions, (2) the questioning strategies, (3) distribution of teachers'questions and (4) wait-time when questioning.The thesis consists of seven chapters.The first chapter is a brief introduction of the whole study. It states the importance of teacher questioning and significance of the study.The second chapter is literature review. Firstly, this chapter presented the definition of teacher questioning. Teacher questioning can be viewed as an interactive process, which aims to involve students in the learning process and elicit thoughtful responses. Later the chapter further explored into questioning including the classification of teacher questions, such as display questions/ referential questions, low-level questions/high-level questions and convergent questions/divergent questions; functions of questioning; aspects of questioning; questioning strategy; distribution of questions and wait- time research.The third chapter is an empirical study. The author attended, tape-recorded and transcribed three EFL teachers' first-year and second-year regular classes in which both the teachers and the students share the same native language—Chinese. In Chapter Four, the author has analyzed the transcripts in four aspects and come out with the results, as:1) English teachers in senior high schools ask more display questions (81%) than referential questions (19%);2) English teachers use more the strategy of repeating comparing with the strategies of probing and promoting.3) English teachers can distribute questions to students in a better manner.4) English teachers in senior high schools do not give students enough wait-time to think over the questions.The author has discussed the results in Chapter Five. Also the author has pointed out the importance of teacher questioning and the current problems inherent with the EFL teachers' questioning, which requires us to manipulate it more effectively and efficiently.In Chapter Six ,the author has given some feasible suggestions.In Chapter Seven, the author has tried to review the results of the empirical study that have been proposed in this study. The author tries to draw some implications for English teachers in China.