A Comparative Study Of Questioning Between Novice Teachers And Proficient Teachers In Senior English Reading Classrooms

As is known to all,classroom questioning accounts for a large proportion of the classroom teaching.Richards and Lockhart pointed out that through teachers' questioning,students could not only be involved into communication interaction,but also be encouraged to modify their own speech and make it comprehensive.Therefore,the research on teachers' questioning is of great significance for teaching.However,the study of teachers' classroom questioning mostly focuses on the college English class and seldom on the senior high school classroom.Meanwhile,there are few comparative studies of classroom questioning between different types of teachers.In this thesis,based on the previous studies at home and abroad,the author tries to explore the differences and similarities of the classroom questioning between novice teachers and proficient teachers.The research questions are as follows:1.What are the differences and similarities between novice teachers and proficient teachers in preparation for questioning,questioning types,questioning strategies,answering ways,wait-time,teachers' feedback and teachers' reflection after questioning?What are the respective problems of these two types of teachers' classroom questioning?2.What are the respective reasons for the different questioning behaviors of novice teachers and proficient teachers in English reading class?3.What are the students' expectations towards teachers' questioning?Which type of teachers' classroom questioning can better meet students' expectation?In this study,two proficient teachers,two novice teachers and 68 students are selected as the research objects.The research objects are chosen from a key senior high school-Wuhan Foreign Language School.These two proficient teachers have worked more than 10 years and at the same time have the senior academic title.As to the novice teachers,both of them have been teaching no more than three years and have no or primary academic title.And the participating students come from the classes of these four teachers.Based on the data analysis from the classroom observation,recording,questionnaire and interview,it is revealed that proficient teachers and novice teachers have something in common.Specifically,both of them use more display questions than referential questions.Both of them have applied diverse questioning strategies in classroom teaching,especially the explaining strategy.Nominating is the most frequently used answering way of novice and proficient teachers.Both of them haven't offered plenty of wait time for students to answer the question.On the other hand,they have some obvious differences in classroom questioning.Firstly,in the preparation for questioning,proficient teachers can design more questions of higher level but novice teachers always spend more time in preparing.Secondly,proficient teachers' ratio of the referential and display questions is more reasonable than novice teachers.Thirdly,the proficient teachers prefer probing and prompting strategies than novice teachers.Fourthly,proficient teachers give students more opportunities to volunteer to answer,but many novice teachers have the tendency to use the meaningless answering way,namely teachers'self-answering.Fifthly,the proficient teachers offer more wait time for students to think and answer than the novice teachers.Sixthly,proficient teachers often praise or encourage students with targeted evaluation while the novice teachers often employ simple positive feedback with "yes" or "no".Last but not least,in terms of teachers'reflection,the proficient teachers do a little better than novice teachers through talking with students after class about the questioning and answering behaviors.Finally,according to the results of the analysis,the author puts forward some advice for teachers'classroom questioning,which has a profound impact on improving teachers' questioning ability and teaching effect,as well as promoting teachers' self-development.