A Study Of College English Teachers’ Classroom Questioning Pattern

Classroom questioning is currently one of the most common and effective teachingtechniques in English language classroom teaching. It is the bond between the teacher andstudents during their interactive learning process; at the same time, it is a vital teachingtechnique to promote students language ability of expression. Thus classroom questioning hassignificant effect on common teaching activities. Nevertheless, the domestic research aroundclassroom questioning started relatively late, and it is till the late90s that there were fewempirical studies were conducted by researchers on this topic; however, most of these studiesfocused on ways and behaviors of the teacher questioning, and very few of them paid attentionto the evaluation of classroom questioning from both teachers and students as well as students’expectations on classroom questioning.Based on output hypothesis of Swain, input hypothesis of Krashenas as well as interactionhypothesis of Long, this thesis investigates classroom questioning in terms of types ofquestions, strategies, wait time and feedbacks through methods such as classroom observation,questionnaires and interviews, etc. In addition, it tentatively analyses teachers’ and students’evaluations on questioning ways as well as students’ expectations on classroom questioning. Inthis research, a total of237non English major students in the grade2010and six Englishteachers of Shanxi University of Finance&Economics are chosen to be the study subject. As anon classroom participant, the researcher has conducted a two-month classroom observationwhich consists of30classes (four to six classes per teacher), and a sound recording andtranscript has been carried out for each class. Meanwhile, four out of six English teachers havebeen invited to complete an interview research and the237student subjects and25collegeEnglish teachers have been invited to complete a questionnaire research.According to the detailed quantitative research and thorough data analysis, the paper hasdrawn the following conclusion that1) display questions raised by teachers in the classroomare much more than referential questions; however, students expect more to answer referentialquestions;2) in terms of contents of questioning, teachers are likely to emphasize onvocabularies and the comprehension of lessons, while students expect that the questions askedhave connection with their own life experience;3) on questioning strategies, teachers intend touse prompting and repetition questions to draw students answers, which has also beenrecognized by students;4) teachers like to specify the students to answer questions orsometimes guide them to answer in chorus, whereas students are able to get the answers without help;5) generally teachers give four to ten seconds before students answer the question,same to students expectations towards it;6) teachers normally give positive feedbacks tostudents, while most students hope to get more detailed instructions;7) classroom questioningplays a significant role to both teachers and students and it is one of the key bonds forteacher-student interaction in the classroom.The author provides some suggestions on helping offer valuable information andreferences for related fields of English language teaching; therefore, better encouraging theinteraction and communication in class and improving English language teaching quality.