An Investigative Study On Teachers' Questioning In Senior High School English Class

As an important link of bilateral activities between teachers and students,teachers' questioning plays a significant role in classroom interaction.However,it is not highly valued by domestic scholars until the early 20 th century,and most studies on teachers' questioning are carried out in universities but inadequate in senior high schools.Therefore,the study on teachers' questioning in senior high school is of practical significance.The thesis aims to explore the following questions:1.What is the ratio of display questions and referential questions in senior high school English class?2.What do teachers do in questioning in terms of wait-time,questioning distributions,questioning strategies,and feedback?The investigation is carried out in a senior high school in Jinzhou,Liaoning Province and20 English teachers are randomly chosen as research participants.The data is collected via classroom observation,interview and questionnaire.The result of the study can be summarized as followings: Firstly,teachers use display questions more often than referential questions which results from the teaching plan and the limitation of teacher's empowerment.Secondly,because of the restriction on class time,wait-time is usually less than 3 second which is inadequate for students to think about the questions.Thirdly,for questioning distribution,teachers prefer to call the roll in class so as to give equal opportunities for students to answer questions.Fourthly,with regard to questioning strategies,most teachers would like to utilize prompting and probing to motivate students' thinking.Repeating and rephrasing can avoid students' misunderstanding of the questions and ensure comprehensible input,while redirecting can make more students participate in the questioning but can also influence students' confidence.Finally,the average percentage of positive feedback is higher than negative feedback in each English class which can encourage more students to answer questions.Effective teachers' questioning can arouse students' interest,stimulate their motivation and create active classroom atmosphere.The investigation inspires teachers to balance the proportion of the types of question,use effective questioning strategies,allocate equal questioning distributions,increase wait-times appropriately and give more positive feedback in class so as to improve the teaching quality.