A Study Of English Teachers’ Questioning Manner In Senior High School

Due to the significant role of questioning manner played in conducting teachingactivity and enhancing teaching quality in senior high school, the author in thisresearch adopts discourse analysis to explore teachers’ questioning manner in Englishclass taken three senior high schools in Chengdu for example. Through classroomobservation, the interactive characteristic of teachers’ questions is vividly embodiedby analyzing learners’ output initiated by teachers’ questioning manner. And somepedagogical implications for foreign language teachers are elicited from this research.The author comes up with three research questions in this research:1.How didsubject teachers use questions to create opportunities for learners to produce languageoutput?2. How did subject teachers utilize questions as interactional modifications toacquire negotiation of meaning?3. How did subject teachers generate questions fromlearners’ response to check linguistic problems in classroom interaction? In order tocollect research data, the author chose three classes from three senior high schools inthe first term of the academic year2012and the first term of the academic year2013,and three teachers and152students took part in this study.152students in total fromthese three different classrooms were observed to respond to teachers’ questioning.9class periods were observed. The pattern of IRF discourse analysis will mainly beused to analyze teachers’ questions in classroom discourse and interactive functions ofquestions will be described in detail to demonstrate. This thesis explores the observed teachers’ questioning manner in the aspect ofteachers’ use of questions and interactive functions of questions. Thus, some findingscan be summarized as follows according to the research. First, referential questionsand display questions are both used by subject teachers in observed classes to createopportunities for learners’ language production. There are two different results. Moredisplay questions are used by subject teachers than referential ones (e.g. Teacher B,and Teacher C), which is similar to Long and Sato’s findings (qtd. in Seliger and Long,p265-285). While, in Teacher A’s class, more referential questions are posed byTeacher A than display ones. Some reasons that might result in the difference arepresented. By examining some excerpts in classroom discourse, referential questionsare more likely to provide opportunities for learners’ more genuine languageproduction. Next, questions are also used as interactional modifications by subjectteachers to help learners acquire negotiation of meaning. As a result, among threeinteractional modifications (clarification request, confirmation checks andcomprehension checks), observed teachers’ use of them diversifies individually.Teacher A prefers to adopt more clarification request than other two. While in TeacherB’s and Teacher C’s classes, comprehension checks is the highest frequency of use.Last, subject teachers generate questions from learners’ response to check linguisticproblems, for they can help learners construct learned knowledge into their cognitivestructure and impart new language knowledge in the exchange. In the end, threepedagogical implications are shown according to the specific empirical evidence fromthe research. First, teachers’ teacher talk as a unified language should be attachedattention to, so that teachers can control the classroom discourse to improve theirforeign language teaching. Second, teachers’ training for questioning is necessary forthem to pose effective questions to improve teaching quality. Finally, teachers’attention should also be paid to learners’ response to teachers’ questions to check theirteaching efficiency, and learners’ silence should not be neglected.