A Study On Teacher Questioning In EFL Classroom Of A Chinese University

Classroom questioning is one of the most vital elements of teaching,and it plays an important role in initiating student participation and facilitating language acquisition.For the language students in China,teacher questioning is the primary input and also makes a significant contribution to students' output in target language.There has been a considerable amount of research on teacher questioning,and most of these studies have focused on the characteristics of questioning modes.However,relatively few studies have been conducted on students' expectation towards teacher questioning and teachers' perception of their use of questions.Therefore,the present study aims to present a survey on the teacher questioning,focusing on students' expectation towards teacher questioning and teachers' perception of their use of questions in a college English classroom.Using Krashen's input hypothesis,Long's interaction hypothesis and Swain's output hypothesis as theoretical bases,this study investigated the English teachers' questioning behavior in a Chinese university.An emphasis of this study was placed on exploring students' expectation towards teacher questioning and teachers' perception of their use of questions.This study collected data by using three types of instruments:classroom observations of 5 teachers and their students,questionnaires for 30 EFL teachers and 150 sophomores of English majors,and interviews with 3 teachers and 5students.Based on the analysis of qualitative and quantitative study,the results show that the teachers initiate more display questions than referential questions,but the majority of students prefer the referential questions.Results also show that display questions are less effective than referential questions in eliciting responses from students.It is found in this study that the average duration of wait time is too short for students' responses,because most of the students desire to have longer wait time to think over teachers' questions.In addition,the findings indicate that the questions are mostly allocated by teacher nomination,but the majority of students wish their teacher to invite volunteers to answer questions.Finally,the results reveal that the teachers provide more positive feedback than negativefeedback,and that most of the students wish to be praised when they give a correct answer.Meanwhile,a majority of the students expect their teachers to ignore small mistake in their responses to questions.The findings of this study can offer some implications for language teaching and learning.First,in order to improve teacher questioning and facilitate students' language acquisition,teachers should not only work to increase referential questions,but also strive to adopt appropriate questioning skills and strategies in different context.Next,teachers should treat student response as provisional,and allocate more time for students to think and to formulate their ideas.In addition,teachers are advised to allocate opportunities to all students to promote their learning potential.Finally,the teachers should provide more positive feedback to encourage the students to answer questions confidently and boldly so as to boost their students' language acquisition.