A Survey On The Current Situation Of Teachers’Questioning In Intensive Reading Class At The Basic Stage For College English Majors In Urumqi

Classroom questioning is one of the most widely employed teaching acts inEFL classroom and one of the main interactive forms between language teacher andlearners, which is considered to be the most important tool for teachers to stimulatestudents’ participation, thinking and learning. In recent years, classroom questioninghas been the concern of educators and scholars (Shomoossi,2004; David,2007; XuLiqun,2010; Cao Yongguo,2013). However, the studies on teachers’ beliefs aboutquestioning and students’ expectations towards teachers’ questioning in intensivereading class at the basic stage for English majors are relatively fewer.Therefore, based on Input Hypothesis, Output Hypothesis and InteractionTheory, the present study attempts to investigate the characteristics of teachers’questioning from five aspects: questioning types, ways of answering, questioningdistribution, questioning strategies and teacher’s feedback by means of classroomobservation＆audio-recording, questionnaires and interview. The differencesbetween teachers’ questioning behaviors and their beliefs about questioning aredisplayed in the form of histogram; the differences between teachers’ questioningbehaviors and students’ expectations are explored through one-way ANOVAanalysis. Moreover, reasons for the inconsistent results are explored.The major findings are as follows:1) Teachers ask mostly display questions (77.28%);“in seating order”(0.45%)and “appoint by chance or in volunteer after group discussion”(3.47%) are adoptedless by teachers; questions are often distributed to the students seated in the front(70.89%) and middle (19.62%); more “repetition”(57.27%) and “prompting”(18.94%) strategies are adopted by teachers; more “positive feedback” are given;errors are often corrected by teachers and students themselves after students finishtheir expression.2) In terms of timing and ways of correcting four types of errors, teachers’questioning practice and their beliefs show no differences. However, with regard toquestioning types, ways of answering, questioning distribution, questioningstrategies and teacher’s feedback, teachers’ questioning practice and their beliefs arein disagreement. The implementation of teachers’ beliefs about questioning isrestricted by students’ current language proficiency, students’ limited personalexperience and limited class time. 3) As for timing and ways of correcting four types of errors, teachers’questioning practice and students’ expectations show no differences. However, withregard to questioning types, ways of answering, questioning distribution, questioningstrategies and teacher’s feedback, there exist discrepancies between teachers’questioning practice and students’ expectations. Two reasons may contribute to theinconsistent results: in the first place, communication between teachers and studentsis relatively insufficient; second, teachers’ questioning behavior is guided by theteaching goal of the basic stage, which may be not in accordance with students’expectations to some degree;In view of the significance of understanding teachers’ questioning beliefs andstudents’ expectations towards teachers’ questioning behavior for the improvementof teachers’ questioning skills, some suggestions for the optimization of teachers’questioning are put forward:1) for teachers, first, they may need to have a overallunderstanding of their own questioning behavior, combine the theory into practice,create their own questioning model and communicate with students more; second,they may require to set questions before class, increase the numbers of referentialquestions; adopt different ways of answering; extend the coverage of questioningand adopt the principle of equal opportunity; employ different questioning strategiesand give proper feedback; errors should be corrected by students themselves underthe guidance of teachers after students finish their expression;2) for students, theymight need to participate actively in the student-centered classroom and observe thesurrounding things carefully so as to develop the ability of thinking critically, hence,to elevate themselves.