English Reading Class-Based Study On Teacher Questioning In Senior High Schools

Teacher questioning is one of the most important teaching methods. In the modern times when education shares diversity and new teaching methods emerge one after another, teacher questioning is still an important component of teaching. Teacher questioning can not only provide important sources of language input for students, but opportunities for students'language output. In English reading classes, effective teacher questioning is helpful to cultivate students'good reading habits and improve their reading skills. Therefore, study of how teacher questioning being used in reading classes of senior high schools is extremely important for improving the quality of English reading teaching. However, very few researchers have conducted a series of empirical study on teacher questioning in senior high school English reading classes.Ten English teachers from two key senior high schools in two counties are chosen to be the sample of being studied. They are of different ages, so they are of great representative. This study adopts the way of class recording, which includes the types, wait-time, strategies and feedback of teacher questioning in English reading classes. Students' responses to the questions are also recorded. After class, the author interviews these teachers about how they design these questions and their opinions towards teacher questioning. On the basis of the questionnaires completed by 462 senior high school students, the author tries to learn their understanding of teacher questioning and their expectations to types, wait-time and feedback of teacher questioning. The study is aimed to explore how to improve the quality of teacher questioning in senior high school English reading classes by analyzing the situation of teacher questioning in senior high school English reading classes and students' feedback towards teaching questioning.Through classroom observation, tape-recording, questionnaires and interviews, the author draws a conclusion as below: Display questions and referential questions are out of proportion -- display questions occupy 59% of the questions raised by the ten teachers while referential questions are only 41%; teachers don't give students enough wait-time after posing one question; the evaluations teachers give students are too simple; when students can't respond to the questions, teachers don't apply appropriate questioning strategies to guide students to continue to answer the questions.The author analyses the reasons of the results above, and provides some implications, such as teachers should raise the awareness of teacher questioning, and prepare questions carefully before class; design appropriate questions according to different teaching objectives and reading stages; apply various questioning strategies when questioning; allow enough wait-time for students and give appropriate feedback to students.