An Investigation And Analysis On Teacher Questioning In Light Of Speech Act Theory

Classroom questioning plays a crucial role in. teacher talk in class. Teachers can communicate and interact dually with students by means of raising questions. This is helpful for stimulating students’ language output and enlightening their thinking. Influenced by traditional teaching methods, most students are not accustomed to asking questions actively in class. So interaction between teachers and students is realized by teacher questioning in classroom. Interaction effects hinge on the quality of teacher questioning to a large extent. Furthermore, the special characteristic of foreign language teaching requests that teacher questioning not only facilitates the interaction between teachers and students but improves students’language communicative competence as well. Speech act theory can be the right solution to the present problem. Taking all the things into consideration, the thesis is designed to investigate the status—quo of college English teacher questioning from the perspective of speech act theory. It attempts to analyze the general characteristics of teacher questioning from a brand—new angle so as to make a practical use of the language.Teachers and students from Northeast Forestry University (NEFU) are chosen to be the research subjects. The quantitative study is conducted by way of tape—recording and students’ questionnaire with an aim to analyze the current situation of college teacher questioning in non—English major classrooms and to find out the existing problems and then to provide workable solutions. Hopefully, this research can play a role in helping teachers self—examine their questioning behaviors, perfect questioning techniques and promote their professional developments so as to improve the quality of English teaching in classroom.In accordance with the results, the features of college teacher questioning for non—English majors are shown as follows:(1) Speech act theory is sometimes employed by teachers. The number of referential questions and convergent questions is more than that of display questions and divergent questions;(2) Teacher distributes questions unequally. Most teachers will direct their questions to a specific group of students on the basis of personal habits, active students are more accessible to teacher questions while others fail to get an opportunity to practice; The way of teachers’ distribution of questions differs from person to person. A large number of teachers employed the method of by volunteer, the ratio f nomination and chorus answering are secondary to that of by volunteer; the phenomenon of teachers’ self-answering is still in existence but its number is comparatively few;(3) In modifying their questioning strategies, teachers use speech act theory frequently, they tend to employ the strategies of repeating and redirecting, while the frequency for other strategies is relatively low;(4) In ways of feedbacks, teachers are liable to provide positive feedbacks which are too mechanic and general to be accepted by students who dislike this kind of feedback, they want teachers to point out their mistakes directly; in order not to threaten students’face and discourage their enthusiasm for study, negative feedback is rarely adopted; even though there are negative feedbacks sometimes, most of them are shown in an indirect way.The results from this research indicate that teachers are in want of abundant and systematic theoretical knowledge on classroom questioning, and their questioning skills are to be improved. In consideration of all the things above, the author puts forward the following strategies:(1) Establishing a harmonious classroom atmosphere.(2) Distributing questions to all students.(3) Confirming answers by students.(4) Cultivating students’communicative skills.As a result of the limited researching conditions, the thesis is carried out on the basis of four teachers and213students from the same university, which is far from generalizing the characteristics of teacher questioning in all aspects. There exist some limitations. Hopefully, the results from the study can provide some references for subsequent researches on teacher questioning in college English classroom.