A Comparative Study Of Chinese-speaking And English-speaking EFL Teachers' Questioning Behaviors

Teachers' Questioning is a hot research topic among teachers and scholars.On one hand,teachers dominate class activities by questions and questions connect teaching activities.Teachers' Questioning plays an important role in class teaching,which affects the quality of English teaching.On the other hand,apart from checking what students learned and assisting students to consolidate what they learned,one of the key functions of class questions is to stimulate students' thinking,which helps students deepen understanding of the knowledge and stir up their interest in learning English and participating in the class activities.Postman(1979)agrees that all of our knowledge comes from questions.Currently,only a few teachers or scholars have conducted researches on questioning behaviors between English-speaking and Chinese-speaking EFL teachers and fewer in primary schools.This thesis comparatively investigates questioning behaviors between English-speaking and Chinese-speaking English EFL teachers in three primary schools in Suzhou Industrial Park(SIP)by class observation and audio recording transcript,based on theories of Constructivism,Input Hypothesis,Output Hypothesis and Interaction Hypothesis,with the hope that some suggestions on questioning could be put forward.The subjects of the study are 6 teachers from primary schools in SIP,including 3 English-speaking EFL teachers and 3 Chinese-speaking EFL teachers.The researcher observed 6 lessons in classes or by watching videos.The researcher studied their question types,question strategies,question waiting time and teacher questioning feedback of the 6 teachers.By comparative study,the researcher found that some similarities and differences among these six teachers,namely English-speaking EFL teachers and Chinese-speaking EFL teachers,which brings us the following suggestions: 1.Teachers are encouraged to propose reference questions in English classes if possible;2.Adopting question strategies in a flexible way will assist students to answer questions;3.Enough waiting time is suggested to set aside for students;4.Praises with comments or follow-up questions are encouraged.Contents and forms of indirect correcting mistakes should be taken into good consideration.This study has reference significance in English teaching of primary schools and its research findings will help improve the quality of class questioning and optimize questioning behaviors.During the research experiment,both Chinese-speaking and English-speaking EFL teachers took part in several teaching discussion activities,which promoted their academic exchanges.