Questioning Of A Novice Teacher:An Action Research

Teacher questioning plays a significant role in English teaching, as it has an important impact on language output of students when responding to questions. By questioning, the teachers can stimulate students? interest, reinforce input, provoke thinking and examine the situation of students. Research has investigated types of questions, questioning modification strategies, wait-time, feedback as well as the students? response for several decades. However, how teachers improve the quality of questioning has been little investigated. For novice teachers, while to identify and solve questioning problems could be meaningful to their professional development, little is known about how they could do so.In order to explore the ways of effective questioning by a novice teacher in the teaching process, an action research is adopted in two-round circles of planning, action, observation, and reflection based on the model of Kemmis & Mc Taggart and in the light of the theory of ZDP and Constructivist theory. Action research combines teaching and researching and it helps teachers verify their own practices and seek solutions to problem, thus, to help the novice teachers develop into experienced ones.The action researcher was a second-year post graduate,and for the first time teaching(as teaching assistant) 42 students of non-English major in a provincial key university. She recorded and transcribed 26 classes(13 weeks) of New College English Integrated Course, each lasting 40 minutes for analysis. And the transcripts were coded by two researchers(author and her colleague) according to classifications by Long & Sato(1983) and Chaudron(1988). At the same time, data were also collected from interview, questionnaire, reflection log on teaching class and on the visited classes taught by more experienced colleague teachers. The research was guided by the following three questions:1) What problems might a novice teacher encounter in classroom questioning?2) What action can a novice teacher take to improve the quality of teacherquestioning?3) What?s the role of self-reflection for better questioning?Based on the analysis of data from multiple sources, the findings could be summarized as follows:1)Some primary problems of classroom questioning of the novice teacher include improper proportion of display questions and referential questions with too many display questions, shortage of questioning modification strategies, excessive self-answering and no-answer, lack of wait-time, and shortage of utterance from the students. There is plenty of space for the novice teacher to improve. After the action research, improvements in view of questioning of the novice teacher were more balanced display questions and referential questions, more questioning modification strategies, increased wait-time, and more participation of students, and also more harmonious relationship between the teacher and students.2)The action the teacher has taken includes purposefully designing questions of the proper balance between display and referential types and of appropriate difficulty levels, consciously use more referential questions in class, waiting longer for students? responses, adopting a kind and encouraging attitude towards students? responses in questioning, and observing classes taught by more experienced teachers after class.3)Self-reflection plays a vital role in action research. By reflection, the teacher can be aware of the deficiency in her questioning and seek ways to solve the problems and come up with more effective questioning.Some suggestions can be made to novice teachers in conducting classroom teaching: 1) He should design questions based on the different aptitudes of students to evoke the interest of all students. 2) He should master the questioning modification strategies. 3) He should change teaching from “teacher-centered” one into “student-centered” one to involve students in more active interaction. By doing action research on questioning, it is also an experience of vigorous self-development for the teacher in learning, problem-solving and applying theory to practice.