Action Research On "Output Hypothesis" Based Question Asking In Third Grade PIB Comprehension Class

As China’s economy continues to develop, every year a large number of American students come to China to learn Chinese. There is also an increasing number of summer Chinese training programs cooperated by University of China and America.Thus, it’s crucial to find a way suitable for American college students to learn Chinese. This paper is written in the framework of action research. The target objects are the Third Grade students of Princeton in Beijing summer Chinese program (PIB). This paper studied how to raise suitable questions based on "Output hypothesis" for American students. In theory, this paper introduced a new approach of conducting action research to analyze studying question asking based on "Output hypothesis". Therefore it broadened the research and application of classroom questioning and provided a new horizon to teaching Chinese as a second language, and, but also for the Chinese to bring a new perspective as a second language teaching. In terms of teaching practice, exploring suitable classroom questioning for the comprehensive Chinese class of Third Grade students in PIB provide a useful reference for the Chinese education researchers and Chinese teachers who teach American students.This paper took five steps to carry out the study. First, find the problem. The author collected student’s classroom recordings and students assignments, and participated in the teaching evaluation. By analyzing the teaching recordings of the first two weeks and the student assessment results, the problems of classroom questioning was found:lack of effective interaction between teachers and students; dull classroom atmosphere; low quality of students’ responses; refusing to cooperate with the teacher by certain students. Thus, the common features of the Third Grade students in PIB were revealed: First, students are all from elite American universities, they are used to and also value the interaction with the teacher in class. Second, the students are intermediate level Chinese learners, so they are unwilling to simply drill the language points. Third, the PIB program is a very intensive summer program, and the students are all very tired. It’s necessary to elicit students’ willingness to interact with the teacher. Fourth, the course took a" question and answer" form, so the teaching methods easily lead to students’ boredom. According to these features the author decided to conduct an action research on question asking based on "Output hypothesis".This study consists six chapters. Chapter One:background, origin and significance of the research. Chapter Two:literature review on relevant established papers on the "output hypothesis", questioning asking and action research. Chapter Three:overview and design of this action research. Chapter Four and Five:action research. Chapter Six:conclusion of the accomplishment and deficiency of this action research.