A Study On Teacher Questioning Types And Classroom Interactions In Reading Class

Teacher questioning is important in class to develop students' independent thinking and language out-put ability,and is the main way to achieve effective teacher-student interactions.In recent years,studies on teacher questioning are focused on the classifications and description of the questioning types and strategies,and the research contents are not entirely new.The analysis of the effectiveness of the questioning is not enough;and the subjects of studies are also limited to high school students and non-English majors,while studies of English majors are few.In view of the above reasons,the thesis uses Long and Sato's classification of question types,question functions,questioning strategies and criteria for effective questioning.The subjects are three teachers and their students from a university of science and engineering at Beijing.Through non-participant classroom observations and recordings,the author analyzes question types,question functions and questioning strategies in-depth.The author aims to find out the question types teachers use in English reading classes,how they use questioning strategies to encourage students to participate in interactions and question function types teachers usually use,and draw conclusions about effective questioning and interactions in the English reading class.Through the analysisof transcriptions and observations of interactions,the author finds that: in the first place,effective display questions(75%)are obviously much more than effective referential questions(65.5%),probably because teachers ask more display questions(252)than referential questions(29),and display questions are easierfor students than referential questions.Secondly,teachers use more questions out of the effective questions to check students' understanding of the text(69).And in effective display questions,the functions can be achieved by way of searching for answers in text.However,predictive function(5)and reflective function(4),which can develop students' association thinking,are rarely realized.Thirdly,both effective display and referential questions s are found helpful with effective interactions between teachers and students.In effective display questions,interpretation functions can lead students to evaluate the learning contents,which caninspire students to think independently and to use language on their own.Teachers can ask more effective referential questions that initiate more effective interactions between teachers and students.Based on the observations,I thinkteachers teaching reading had better first understand the teaching goals for the reading course at the beginning,for instance,comprehension of the text,reading between the lines and reading beyond the lines.Then,teachers can closely consider what types of questions to be raised and their functions as well as the effect.Referential questions which contain predictive and reflective functionscan be more frequently used in reading class.Teachers can be more flexiblein terms of questioning strategies for the sake of raising students' self-confidence and better teacher-student interactions.Based on previous studies and from the perspective of questioning effectiveness,this thesis has done a somewhat comprehensive analysis of classroom effective questioning in the English major reading class.The author has offered suggestions according to the research conclusions,and the author hopes that the specific data analysis can provide useful references for follow-up studies andfor teachers of reading.More such studies should be made that can be generalized.