A Corpus-based Comparative STudy On Teachers' Questioning In Senior High EFL Classrooms

Teachers'questioning is a prominent aspect of teacher talk. The techniques, content and style of teachers'questioning to some extend influence students'learning process, learning quality as well as their interest in classroom interaction. With the adoption of the New Curriculum Standards for middle school students, task-based approach is highly recommended, which means that a student-centered approach is adopted instead of the traditional one. Consequently, we can assume that teachers'beliefs and classroom interactions would be very likely to be changed, and it would be of great importance to examine teachers'questioning and its effectiveness.Drawing upon part of the data from the Chinese Secondary School English Classroom Discourse Corpus built by the Northeast Normal University (Liu, Lin & Wang, 2010), this study compares the similarities and differences of teacher questions between key schools and ordinary schools, with a focus on teachers'questioning style and questioning strategies, in order to find out the features of current teachers'questioning at this level of English teaching. This research finds that teachers in the key schools tend to ask questions more effectively and they are more skilled in employing efficient questioning techniques. In contrast, the effectiveness of teachers'questions in the ordinary schools is relatively low compared with that of the key schools;therefore,the questioning effectiveness in ordinary schools needs to be improved urgently.Based on the findings, some implications are provided:(1)Teachers should ask more referential questions in accordance with students'language and cognitive level;(2) questioning strategies should be applied more frequently and optimize their effects;(3)Various questioning patterns and less translational questions should be used and yes-no questions might restrict students'active language output; (4) Teachers should strive for the clarity of the questions by using diverse expressions rather than simply translate them into Chinese; (5) Teachers should avail questions to a larger range of students instead of a few advanced learners. Furthermore, it is also necessary to enhance teachers'professional development and update teachers'belief.In addition, I hope this study can contribute to a better understanding of the effectiveness of English teachers'questioning at senior high schools; and can also provide some implications for English teaching and research.