An Investigation Of Teacher Questioning In Senior School English Class

As a crucial component in language classroom teaching,questioning is also one of the most important means in English classroom teaching.The improvement of students' ability of thinking and expression is advocated in China.Teacher questioning,as a teacher utterance,is to stimulate students to think and to elicit an oral response from the students.The understanding of teacher questioning is helpful for teachers to improve teaching skills to achieve the expected teaching outcome.In recent years,research on questioning in classroom has been increasing both at home and abroad.The research mainly focused on the classification,frequency,distribution,strategies of questioning,the wait-time,and teacher feedback of teacher questioning.Since most of the researchers investigated the situation in primary schools,junior schools,and colleges,there is still a gap of investigating the questioning in senior school.Therefore,a further research needs to be conducted on teacher questioning in senior schools.This research is based on Krashen's Input hypothesis and Swan's Output hypothesis and aims to discuss the following research questions:(1)What are the features of teacher questioning in senior schools?(2)What are the problems in teacher questioning in senior schools? This research mainly analyzes 4 teachers and their 243 students at Grade 2 in Puyang No.1 Senior School from the following 6 parts: frequency,types of teacher questioning,ways of distributing questions,wait-time,feedback and effect of teacher questioning.The following 3 instruments are adopted: classroom observation,questionnaire for students and interview for teachers.Research procedure is as follows: firstly,classroom observation,from September to December in 2016,observation scale and voice record are adapted to find out the features in teacher questioning;secondly,questionnaire,questionnaire is sent out in December 2016,and it includes students' feedback and expectation of teacher questioning;thirdly,interview,interviewing with the four teachers aims to learn their understanding and design philosophy of teacher questioning.The result of this investigation shows:(1)the features of the situation of teacher questioning in senior school: more display questions are adopted by teachers than referential questions;it aims to help students review what they have learned;the given wait-time is proper;teachers always distribute questions by themselves or by the whole class;as for the feedback,teachers tend to give positive feedback with some simple words when students give the correct answers and when students cannot give the right answers at once,teachers will normally nominate another student to answer instead.Nevertheless,compared with other findings in previous studies,teachers usually spare so little time to raise questions for students to answer.Additionally,this study also finds that the relationship between the English level of students and the expected wait-time,frequency and effect of teacher questioning.(2)the problem in teacher questioning in senior school English class: due to heavy teaching load there is no sufficient time to raise questions,consequently,the opportunities for students to enhance their thinking abilities and expressions are sharply decreased;after students giving answers,teacher feedback is not proper;not all teachers have a profound and professional knowledge which is related to teacher questioning.The implications of the thesis for English teaching in senior school: under the current teaching environment,teachers should design questions properly and provide proper feedback after students give their answers to achieve the best effect of questioning;meanwhile,teachers should improve professional knowledge on teacher questioning theories.