A Comparative Analysis Of Teacher Questioning Between Chinese And Foreign Teachers In Bilingual Teaching Classes

Owing to its double goals to improve learner’s academic competence and English proficiency at the same time, bilingual teaching has been introduced into China. Considerable relative researches have been done, especially on the discussion of qualified teachers. Due to the development of globalization, an increasing number of foreign teachers have been introduced to teach bilingual teaching classes in China. In contrast, fewer researches are focused on classroom discourse in bilingual teaching classes. As an indispensable part of teacher talk, teacher questioning helps students to take part in classroom interaction, increase comprehensible input and promote the process of language acquisition. Through classroom observation, questionnaire and interview, this study aims to find the differences of teacher questioning between foreign teacher and Chinese teacher, and try to dig out the possible causes for their distinctive behaviors of posing questions, thus to identify their respective advantages and provide evidences for reciprocal learning between teachers.Having transcribed the recordings of two teachers’classes, the author analyzes the data from five aspects:question classification, questioning strategy, wait-time, question distribution and teacher feedback. Following are the findings:1. Seldom do two teachers use questioning strategies and the majority of questions asked are for all students, but Chinese teacher communicates with a larger number of students in class. 2. The proportion of referential question in foreign teacher’s class is higher than that in Chinese teacher’s class.3. After posing a question, foreign teacher gives longer wait time for students.4. All the feedbacks given by two teachers are positive feedbacks. However, Chinese teacher is used to repeating what student said when provides feedback, while foreign teacher tends to ask new questions to promote the process of meaning negotiation.After analyzing the data from questionnaire and interview, possible causes for two teachers’distinctive behaviors of posing questions are listed as follows:1.Their distinctive view towards the target language and language teaching.2. The influence from traditional teaching method.3. Their intention to protect students’face during class.On the basis of this empirical analysis, some suggestions have been put forward in this study such as:try to balance various kinds of questions, integrate questions to students’ current language competence by applying questioning strategies, and lengthen the wait-time appropriately.Based on previous researches, this study shows the status quo of teacher questioning in bilingual teaching classes which I believe is helpful for people to have a deeper understanding of bilingual teaching and teacher questioning between Chinese and foreign teachers.