The Impact Of English Teachers’ Question Types And Strategies On Meaning Negotiation In Junior English Classroom

Questioning in the classroom is one of the important methods of English classroom teaching. Good andproper questions can increase teacher-student exchange. They can promote students’ interest in learning, inspirestudents’ thoughts, and stimulate them to express themselves. Due to the importance of classroom questioning,many researchers abroad have studied it at an earlier time, such as Bloom,1956and Barnes,1969. As for themiddle school English teaching in China, the systematic research about it can be dated back to2004, when theresearchers have found that questioning not only enables teachers to check the comprehension of students’, butalso serves as means of effective language input and output. The current situation of questioning in Englishclassroom at home is not optimistic enough. Both the quality and quantity of teachers’ questioning can’t meet therequirements of interaction and meaning negotiation. Therefore, it can’t input the target language effectively forthe language learners.Under such background, the author bases this research on the input and output hypothesis, interactionhypothesis as well as meaning negotiation. The main research questions are as follows. Firstly, what is thefrequency of different types of question strategies? Secondly, in the English classroom, what are the commonlyused question types? And what’s the frequency of theses question types? Thirdly, which question types aregenerally accepted by students? Fourthly, which types of questions and question strategies can help improvemeaning negotiation? The author transcripts and analyses the45minutes’ teaching videos of four Englishteachers from Shili Pu Junior Middle School in Gan Su Province by integrating the methods of investigation,questionnaire and interview. The results of this research are as follows. Firstly, teachers apply more elicitingthan any other questioning strategies. Secondly, most of the questions raised by the teachers are closed, displayand medium-oriented questions, while a few open-ended, referential and message-oriented questions are asked.Thirdly, from the students’ questionnaire, it is clear that students preferred open-ended questions. Fourthly, moreopen-ended, referential and message-oriented questions with the strategies of repetition and wait time helpimprove meaning negotiation.The author finally draws a conclusion of main findings and points out the limitations and suggestions forfurther research.