Investigation And Analysis Of Native And Non-native English Tcacliers’ Questioning In Classrooms

Questioning, as an important constituent of teacher talk in classroomcontext, functions not only as input for students, but also an opportunity forthem to produce output and receive feedback. A survey shows that thequestioning－answering activities take up70%of the classroom talk(Tsui,1985) As a result, teachers’ questioning has drawn considerable attention fromresearchers and teachers for several years. As early as1912the Americanscholar, R. Stevens, for the first time made a systematic study on teachers’questioning. He found that teachers’ questioning and students’ answeringoccupied about80%of the class time and during lecturing two to fourquestions per minute were asked. Here from, teachers’ questioning was“regarded as the core of effective teaching”(Jin Chuanbao,1997:54). Sincethen a variety of researches on teachers’ questioning have been carried out.Whereas, it was not until in the late1990s that researchers at home began toconduct empirical studies on College English teachers’ questioning. Thesubjects of these studies only pay attention to non-native English teachers andignore another group—native English teachers. The present study focuses onquestioning of both native and non-native English teachers, in an attempt tomake an investigation of the current situation of teacher questioning in EFLclassroom, aims to promote the communication between native andnon-native English teachers in teaching experience and provide reference forthose new college English teachers.Therefore, based on Krashen’ s Input Hypothesis, Long’s InteractionHypothesis and Swain’s Output Hypothesis, this thesis, taking five nativeEnglish teachers, non-native English teacher and their students from threeuniversities in Inner Mongolia as its subjects, makes an investigation of thecurrent situation in four fundamental aspects, question types, question strategies, wait-time, teachers’ feedback by means of class observation,questionnaire and interview. It is hoped that they can learn from each other.Meanwhile, the paper put forward some constructive suggestions, which willcontribute to developing their questioning skills and further improving secondlanguage teaching. The results of the investigation are as follows: Firstly, bothnative and non-native English teachers ask more display questions thanreferential questions; but native teachers ask two times more referentialquestions than non-native teachers. Secondly, as far as question modificationis concerned, both of them vary their strategies to aid students in repairingtheir errors, stimulating their thinking, motivating them to participate moreinto classroom activities. But among the strategies, non-native teachers useprompting most; native teachers employ redirecting most. Thirdly, both ofthem wait longer after asking referential questions than display questions. Butobviously, native teachers wait longer than non-native teachers after these twoquestion types. Fourthly, both of them give students more positive feedbackthan negative feedback; and when students give a wrong answer, both of themprefer to guide student to self-correction first.As a conclusion, teachers from the two groups are faced with the learnerswho have been in the context of Chinese culture. They share some of thecharacteristics on teacher talk but each group has its own unique strengths.Teachers from the two groups should learn from each other in order toimprove their questioning and facilitate classroom interactions. According tothe results of the research, some suggestions on native and non-nativeteachers’ classroom questioning are proposed, such as, Chinese teachersshould make a shift from the emphasis of linguistic knowledge tocommunicative competence; both foreign and Chinese teachers should takeaffective factors into consideration in questioning, trying to lower affectivefactors like nervousness, anxiety and inhibition in language learners by givingproper feedback and longer wait-time; foreign teachers should learn moreabout students’ linguistic competence and personality type and adjust theobject of questioning accordingly. Based on previous researches, the present dissertation makes aninvestigation and analysis of native and non-native teachers’ questioning inclassroom in a new perspective, which shows the current situation of teachers’questioning in university with true data analysis. It is believed that theanalysis can provide reference for teachers to understand classroom questions,think about their own classroom questioning techniques and the follow-upstudies on teacher questioning.