Action Research On Exploring Effective Questioning Strategies To Facilitate Teacher-Student Interaction In English Classrooms Of A Vocational School

Nowadays, most of the students choose to study in a vocational school instead of a high school because of their poor learning foundation, especially in English learning,which makes it tough for English teachers to organize English teaching effectively in classes. In such classes, students are reluctant to raise questions, give responses or opinions. As a result, there is little interaction between the teacher and the students,making the students fall asleep or even play mobile phones in class. What is worse,most teachers in vocational schools don't have the awareness of using effective questioning strategies and are confused about the interaction failure. In order to explore the effective questioning strategies and improve the classroom interaction, the researcher carries out this action research.Based on Long's interaction hypothesis, Swain's output hypothesis and Vygosky's zone of proximal development, the present action research underwent two cycles of research procedures. The study lasted for one term, from September 2015 to December 2015, aiming to address the following three questions: 1).What factors influence teacher-student interaction in an English classroom of vocational schools?2).What questioning strategies can facilitate the teacher-student interaction effectively in an English classroom of vocational schools? 3). How can the questioning strategies facilitate the teacher-student interaction effectively in an English classroom of vocational schools? This research was carried out in the class of the tourism major in Huizhou Commercial School, and 51 students were involved in the research. The instruments such as classroom observation, interviews, questionnaires, and videos were employed in this study to collect data.Analysis of the data produces the following findings: firstly, students' learning interests, students' learning anxiety and students' English proficiency affect students' attitude towards teacher-student interaction as well as their performance of interaction.Secondly, the questioning strategies including the question-designing strategies,controlling strategies and feedback strategies can facilitate the teacher-student interaction effectively. Thirdly, designing questions relevant to students' life, choosingtarget respondents, offering enough wait-time between 3-8 seconds and providing specific feedbacks, such as praise with comments, repetition plus praise or guiding students to promote self-repair are all helpful to improve teacher-student interaction.Finally, it is suggested that more researches concerning teacher's factors as well as more controlling strategies, such as probing and rephrasing are needed in the future.