A Study On Classroom Questioning Of Excellent English Teachers In Junior Middle School

Classroom questioning is one of the main forms of interaction between teachers andstudents in class, which lays the foundation for successful teaching. Effective classroomquestioning is the key to conduct a good English class. Through questioning and feedback,teachers can stimulate the students’ interest in English learning and encourage them to thinkand speak. By analyzing the outstanding cases of English teaching in junior middle school inthe aspect of classroom questioning, this thesis aimed to offer reference for future researchand teaching, to provide evidences for constructing English teaching model and to offerreference for English teaching practice in junior middle school, thus the teachers can optimizethe classroom questioning to improve the effect of classroom teaching.The present study attempted to take as samples of the videos of demonstration classes by8teachers randomly chosen from the8th National Junior Middle School EnglishDemonstration Classes, which was held in Qingdao, in April,2010. By using qualitative andquantitative research methods, the thesis made an analysis of the characteristics of theexcellent English teachers in classroom questioning in junior middle school from six aspectssuch as question types, wait-time, question distribution, ways of asking questions, questioningskills and feedback. Findings are as follows.(1) Excellent English teachers tend to raise moredisplay questions than reference ones, but compared to the ordinary teachers, the proportionof reference questions has greatly increased.(2) Excellent English teachers leave sufficientwait-time after questions.(3) As for distribution, excellent teachers distribute questionsevenly, though the opportunities for the students sitting at the back is slightly less than thosein the front. But, there is a problem that some students are asked more frequently than others.(4) Excellent teachers give priority to the volunteers, supplemented by designated and chorusway of answering. But, self-answering exist among all of them and hardly any student in classask either the teachers or students questions.(5) Excellent teachers do not use questioningskills frequently, while the most frequently used is the repeating skill.(6) All the excellentteachers give positive feedback with praise as the main. However, most of them mainly givesimple praise, with evaluative praise and repeating simple praise as secondary, and with otherfeedback forms such as asking other students to answer and offering hints to students forself-correction. Based on the findings, the following suggestions are put forward for the English teachersin junior middle school:(1) to give as many reference questions related to the students’practical life as possible in teaching.(2) to give5minute wait-time after questions or longer.(3) to distribute appropriately and evenly questions among each student, to ensure eachstudent have the opportunity to show themselves.(4) to encourage students to answerquestions voluntarily, and to ask questions both to the teachers and other students, and try notto use self-answering.(5) to constantly change questioning skills, and combine a variety ofskills, and do not overuse simple questions.(6) to praise and encourage students as the mainfeedback, and try to avoid using the same words to evaluate, try not to criticize, and when astudent gives a wrong answer, to offer him help for self-correction.The findings of the present study may hopefully help the English teachers in juniormiddle school have self-reflection on his or her classroom questioning, deepen theirunderstanding of the laws of English teaching, therefore has a certain theoretical significanceon foreign language teaching and research. At the same time, the research results may serve asexamples to follow in junior middle school English teaching practice, and offer reference tothe English teachers to optimize their classroom questioning and improve their classroomteaching effect.