A Study On Teacher Questioning In The Integrated English Class

Teacher questioning has attracted much attention from researchers abroad in the field of language teaching for several decades. Previous studies suggest that teacher questioning is one of the most-frequently used and effective means for language teachers to organize classroom teaching and improve its effectiveness. On the one hand, teacher questioning can increase students' language input. On the other hand, it can initiate teacher-learner and learner- learner interaction in the classroom as well as promote students' language output and develop their critical thinking. However, the study on teacher questioning at home, especially that taking place in the course of Integrated English, is insufficient. Hence, on the basis of previous researches, the present study aims to analyze and examine the status quo of IE teacher questioning from the perspectives of question types, effective questioning strategies, teachers'feedback, and the characteristics of interpersonal rhetoric of the teacher-learner question-answering discourse in the classroom, for the purpose of exploring ways to facilitate students'study of Integrated English.Four IE teachers and their English-major classes with a total of 120 students are selected as the subjects of the present research, including one class who just responded to the SQ. They are all from the College of Foreign Studies of a key university in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The author observes the three sessions (nine periods each class) of IE classes, covering a whole unit and lasting around 1400 minutes all along. Audio-recording as well as note-taking are done at the same time. And then, the recordings are made into transcription. In addition, interviews are conducted with the four teachers and 120 students are required to respond to the SQ. The collected data (including notes, audio-recordings, interviews and transcriptions) are then carefully sorted and analyzed with the guidance of the related theories. The results are as follows: 1) The higher cognitive questions which help train the students' thinking ability are not enough as expected in junior IE classes; 2) Teachers' explicit positive feedback and affective feedback are not sufficient; 3) IE teachers tend to more often use rephrasing strategy or repeating strategy when questioning; 4) Wait-timeⅠ(WTI) of three teachers are more than three seconds, except for the novice one; 5) From the perspective of interpersonal rhetoric, the students do not willingly answer their teacher's questions or raise their own in public due to being afraid of losing face. This present thesis consists of five parts. Chapter One is a brief introduction to the whole thesis, stating the origin and the purpose of the present study. Chapter Two presents a review of literature on the previous studies of teacher questioning conducted in China and abroad, which includes the related theoretical basis about teacher questioning. Chapter Three mainly presents the research questions, the research design and procedures. Chapter Four provides detailed description and analysis of the research results of IE teacher questioning. Chapter Five serves as the conclusion, in which findings and implications are presented.Due to the author's limited language level and the lack of relevant teaching experience as well as the small sample size, it is proposed that larger-scale and more detailed investigation be conducted in the future.