The Analysis Of Cognitive Orientation Of English Class Questioning In The Junior Middle School

Researchers have done many studies about questioning on different aspects, while the study on the relationship between questioning and thinking and the study on the teaching concepts contained in the classroom questioning can be further explored and studied. Therefore, based on “The Excellent Teachers’ Training Project” in Qinzhou City, this thesis focuses on the analysis of the teachers’ questioning characteristics and the cognitive orientation of classroom questioning in the junior middle schools.Based on Bloom’s taxonomy of education objectives’ cognitive domain and Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development(ZPD), three research questions are studied.(1) What are the characteristics of English teachers’ questioning in the junior middle school?(2) How does teachers’ classroom questioning guide students’ cognitive development?(3) What are the implications of cognitive orientation of questioning on students’ critical ability and teacher’s professional quality? For the sake of solving the problems, classroom observation, transcripts and students’ questionnaires are adopted as the research instruments. Six English classes, which are instructed by the six teachers from “The Excellent Teachers’ Training Project” in Qinzhou City, are recorded by video. The videos are played and observed repeatedly and transcribed. Moreover, the questionnaire is made and amended on the basis of Zhou Xing& Zhou Yun’(2002) questionnaire, which is adopted by many other researchers, thus it has reliability and validity. 200 copies of questionnaires are distributed to students and 195 copies are collected. The frequency analysis of the questionnaire is made by SPSS 17.0. The major findings are as follows by seriously analyzing the data.1. In term of questioning types, the low order thinking questions, which are knowledge, comprehension and application questions, take up more than 85%, while the high order thinking questions of analysis, synthesis and evaluation just hold a small amount, therefore, based on the teaching objectives and students’ cognitive level, teachers should design different cognitive level questions and distribute their proportion reasonably in order to make questions match with students’ cognitive structure and the zone of proximal development.2. In term of questioning distribution, teachers tend to favor in the chorus and the individual student modes. The group presenter, teacher-self answer and no answer responding ways sometimes are adopted in class. Compared with the other kinds of responding ways, the group presenter responding way is more effective in activating students’ thinking collision. The teacher-self and no response are the low effective questioning. Hence, in order to activate and inspire more students in thinking, teachers should distribute questions reasonably and eliminate the meaningless questions.3. In term of questioning strategies, probing, chaining and repetition are the teachers’ favor, they can encourage students to explore and think questions, and then inspire students’ thinking and promote their cognitive development. The rephrasing, simplification and decomposition strategies are adopted to guide students in thinking and solve problems when the questions are too difficult to respond.4. The cognitive orientation of questioning influences students’ critical thinking and teachers’ professional quality. Therefore, teachers should cultivate students’ questioning consciousness to make them dare to raise questions in class. Moreover, teachers should consider students’ cognitive level and age characteristics when designing questions so as to make questions in students’ zone of proximal development. What’s more, the cognitive orientation of questioning has washback effects on teachers’ professional quality. Because questioning presents teachers’ teaching belief and teaching methodology, hence improving the quality of questioning will be beneficial for teachers’ professional quality.