A Study On The Differences Between Chinese And American Senior High English Teacher Questioning—From The Perspective Of Turn-taking

As the main source of teacher talk, the class questioning is not only the major tools of implanting teaching tasks, but also a vital source of language input for learners. It is the bond between the teacher and students in their interactive process. Meantime, it also can be regarded as the important teaching technique to promote students language ability of expression. Classroom questioning can stimulate students’ thinking, assess students’ progress, promote learning interest, emphasize key points and initiate interaction with students. Furthermore, it is a vital teaching technique to facilitate students’ language ability of expression. Teacher and students keep changing roles in the classroom questioning, which forms the specific turn-taking in class. Based on turn-taking theory and interaction hypothesis, this thesis examines the differences in the classroom questioning between China and America through classroom observation, interviews, questionnaires and reflective journals. It will reflect on the following three aspects:Current phenomenon and problems of turn-taking in senior schools in ChinaDifferences of turn-taking between Chinese and American teachers in English classMethods to solve the existing problems of China teachers’ questioning in classThe findings of the research show that the main classroom discourse structure in China is still the rigid Initiation-Response-Feedback(IRF) structure. The teacher master most of the turns. The differences on the aspect of classroom questioning between Chinese and American teachers include following aspects: the Chinese teachers tend to specify the students to answer questions or sometimes self-answer. They occupy more turns of talk than the students and speak much more per turn than the students do; while the American teachers better employ the strategies of questioning, and they are full aware of the importance of transferring the turns to students. Therefore, Chinese teachers need to pay attention to the teacher professional development as well as improve their own language proficiency and strategies of questioning and establish a better interaction with students.Some suggestions and references are provided in the end of the thesis. It is hoped that English teachers in China would find the research useful in encouraging interaction and communication in class and improving English teaching quality.