A Study Of The Effect That Teachers’ Questioning Wait-time Has On Students’ Discourse Output

Since the approach of communicative language teaching has gradually been accepted by people, more and more experts and scholars have begun to focus on classroom discourse. That is because most of discourse in classroom is on teachers’ questioning and students’ answering. Until now, many western scholars have done some related researches, and many domestic scholars have also done some researches, but most of them pay more attention to the conclusion of previous teaching experience and the analysis of thesis. Therefore, many related researches in China are not as systematic as those in western countries. In this present study, from the empirical aspect, the author tries to investigate the effect that Senior One English teachers’ open questioning wait time makes on students’ output and hope to get some valuable results which could better serve teaching in reality.This research, a case study, which investigates two Senior One classes, both of which are taught by the same English teacher in Fuzhou No.4Senior Middle School for two months. During this process, the author observed these two classes and recorded their classroom discourse. The following three questions are to be answered in this research:1. Of open questions and non-open questions, which type of question is in the majority in class?2. What are the effects that teachers’ open questioning wait-time makes on students’ discourse output?3. Are there any rules that exist between teachers’ open questioning wait-time and students’ output? If so, what are they?The author thoroughly recorded the classroom discourse, which have been transcribed after carefully selected. In this research, the main findings are as followed:1. Of open questions and non-open questions, non-open questions are in the majority in class.2. The main effects that teachers’ open questioning wait-time has on students’discourse output manifest in the number of words in students’ answers and the various forms of students’ answers.3. A common rule obtained from these two classes data is:when teachers’ questioning wait-time increases, the times that students use complicated sentences in answers also increase; and vice versa.The teaching implications of this research mainly manifest in the following three aspects:(1) the necessity to increase the proportion of open questions in class;(2) teachers’making sure of the questioning wait-time in class is enough and appropriate;(3) the necessity to enhance the interaction between teachers and students, and properly extend the questioning wait-time so as to encourage students to use more complicated sentences.This research needs to be further improved in consideration of its limitations.