A Case Study On Teacher Questioning Strategies In English Reading Class In Senior High School

This paper focuses on exploring teacher questioning strategies in senior high school reading classrooms in an attempt to get some implications for English teaching. Three English teachers from a key high school in Tianjin were chosen as the research subjects. Based on Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis, Swain’s output hypothesis and Long’s interaction hypothesis; three teachers’ reading lessons were observed and transcribed as the materials for data analysis. The author conducted a research on the question types, the distribution of questions, the correlation between the types of questions and the distributions of questions and questioning strategies using the classroom observation and students’ questionnaire. The survey results shows that:(1) the teachers used seven types of questions, among which knowledge questions and comprehension questions were used with greater frequency than application, inference, analysis, synthesis and evaluation questions. (2) Inference questions and analysis questions are the second type of questions used by the teachers in reading class. They were used almost with the same frequency. (3) Application questions, synthesis question and evaluation questions were seldom used in English reading classroom. (4) The teachers mainly asked the whole class questions and the teachers asked the students to answer the questions by calling their names. And the percentage of the students who volunteer to answer questions and the teacher self-answering questions is lower than other questioning method. (5) Low-level questions like knowledge questions were asked facing the whole class, and higher questions are answered by nominating student’s name. (6) Teachers are seldom using questioning strategies in the classroom from the whole view, and the repeating and redirecting method were used more than others. Teachers are seldom using prompting and probing strategies in reading classes. At the end, the author offered some suggestions according to the above findings in hope that it may be helpful to English classroom teaching in senior high school. However, because of the limited knowledge and lack of teaching experience, there are still more possibilities to be explored for further study.