An Investigation On Status Quo Of English Classroom Questioning In Senior High Schools In Yuyang District Of Yulin

The stronghold of education development is in the school, while the way of schooleducation is in the classroom. As the core part of classroom teaching, questioning plays an importantrole in it. For the advantages of its simpleness and practicalness, questioning is applied extensively inteaching. Meanwhile, it is also regarded as a heuristic technique, which is used by teachers to attractstudents’ attention, promote students’ oral English, master and evaluate student’s academic progress.The successful use of this technique is a significant approach to carry out the new curriculum reformand improve the English teaching effect. Thereby, the author takes questioning as the breakthroughpoint, conducting an investigation on status quo of English classroom questioning in senior highschools in Yuyang district of Yulin. By doing this, the author wants to find out measures of optimizingEnglish classroom questioning after study on the problems existing in questioning and hopes to makea little contribution to the improving of English classroom teaching for the district.Up till now, the number of senior high school in Yu Yang (district of Yulin of Shaanxi province)increased to10from4in the year of2000. These ten schools are presented with characters of differentlevels and uneven development. They respectively belong to provincial key school, city key school,newly built school and school run by the local people, the four different levels. There are nooutstanding differences in their faculty, students scale and educational condition etc. within each level.For the convenience, the author drew The First High School, Suzhou High School, The Tenth HighSchool of Yulin and The Affiliated High School of Yulin College from each level. Then he randomlysampled one senior teacher, one first-grade teacher, one secondary teacher as well as100studentsfrom each school. Taking totally12teachers and400students as research subject, the author carriedout a deep and comprehensive investigation aiming at finding problems in questioning and teachingideas hid behind in senior high schools’ English classroom of Yuyang as well as providing optimizing measures for classroom teaching there.In order to get an overall and accurate understanding of the actual situation of English classroomquestioning in senior high schools in Yuyang district of Yulin, the author designed a set ofinvestigation plan involving both qualitative research and quantitative research: entering classroom tohave a direct observation on practical application of questioning in classroom teaching; Interviewingteachers to explore the teaching ideas under questioning behavior; Giving out questionnaire toinvestigate students’ attitude towards and expectation of questioning. The investigation result showedthat there were a great deal of problems existing in English classroom questioning in Yuyang districtof Yulin and English classroom questioning had not been given supposed play. The direct and evidentresult of the problems was that students became negative to answering questions and the classroombecame the stage for teachers to perform alone or battlefield for minority top students to compete.Specifically speaking, problems existing in English classroom questioning in Yuyang district of Yulinmainly were: The quantity and frequency of questioning was too arbitrary; Teachers had not given fullplay to interaction in language learning; Most questions were display questions; students lackedcommunication in question-answer process in class; Unscientific way of problem distribution hadweaken questioning effect and unequal distribution had led to bad ecological environment forquestioning; The insufficiency of time set aside for thinking made questioning a mere formality;Tones and manners in questioning failed to stimulate students’ interests to answer. What’s worse, theymight have the opposite function; The use of questioning modification strategies were rare, andcannot enlighten and guide the students; Besides, feedbacks from teachers could not bring students thepositive evaluation and encouragement. All of the problems, in turn, reflect the following teachingideas: Attaching too much importance to obtainment of linguistic knowledge without considering theability cultivation of communication;“busyness, blindness, puzzle (3mangs in Chinese)” beingshowed in the whole questioning process.In view of the problems existing in the classroom, the author put forward direct ways tooptimize the classroom questioning in Yuyang distric of Yulin by considering the disciplinecharacteristic of English, students’ emotional expectation and realistic condition together: Balancingthe proportion of reference and display questions; Adjusting strategies with flexible use of various questioing; Distributing questioning fairly and reasonably; providing enough time for students tothink before answering; Evaluating students’ answers in a more effective way.