A Comparative Study On The Classroom Question-raising Of English Teachers In Urban And Rural Junior Middle Schools

Classroom questioning is an important part of English classroom teaching.Questioning as the common form of teachers discourse is the focus in English classroom teaching and research.At present,there is the dual structure in urban and rural middle school education in China,so the investigations of classroom questioning of middle schools are undoubtedly of considerable realistic significance,especially the classroom questioning in different regions.In this study,the classroom questioning is selected as the research entry point,and sixty-four English teachers of four junior middle schools in the urban and rural areas of Yuanping City were investigated.The questionnaire is to find the similarities and differences from their attitudes,preparation,organization and reflection of classroom questioning.Twelve English classes are selected from three urban teachers and three rural teachers of the eighth grade through the real teaching condition of classroom observation.These six teachers possess more than five years' teaching experience.By using classroom observation scale,the author analyzes the similarities and differences from the perspectives of the questioning types,questioning strategies,the waiting time and teachers' feedbacks between urban English teachers and rural English teachers.The results of the questionnaire showed that,firstly,in terms of the teachers' attitudes towards the classroom questioning,both urban and rural teachers generally believe that classroom questioning is important for improving students' participation in classroom interaction.The main purpose of questioning is to check students' understanding.Urban teachers pay more attention to questioning and strategies so as to stimulate students' thinking but the purpose of the rural teachers' questions are generally to review knowledge.Secondly,in terms of the preparation of classroom questioning,in the process of question design,mostof urban and rural teachers focus on students' cognition,teaching objectives and the difficult and key points.But urban teachers have the stronger sense of classroom questioning and they spend long time preparing questions meticulously according to their teaching experience or the application of the Internet.In addition,they combine knowledge points with questions and these questions are written in the lesson plans.However,the rural teachers roughly consider the questions before class so that the time spent on the design of the questions is relatively less and the majority of their questions come from reference books.Thirdly,in terms of the implementation of classroom questioning,urban teachers are accustomed to asking valuable questions and prefer to use group discussion to solve difficult questions.On the contrary,the rural teachers rarely require their students to discuss the questions in groups and they often answer their own questions directly by themselves,paying less attention to the questions whether they are worth thinking about.Fourthly,both urban and rural English teachers reflect questioning after class,but the reflections of urban teachers are mainly “student-centered”,while the reflections of the rural teachers are mainly “teacher-centered”.At the same time,most rural teachers feel a little pressure on classroom questioning.The results of classroom observation are as follows: Firstly,in terms of the questioning types,the display questions outnumber the referential questions.The total number of questions and display questions of urban teachers are more than that of rural teachers,and rural teachers seldom ask referential questions.Secondly,in terms of the questioning strategies,the rural teachers tend to use “repeating” and “explaining” strategies,while the urban teachers are more flexible in the application of questioning strategies.Thirdly,urban English teachers give longer waiting time than rural teachers.Fourthly,the proportion of urban teachers' positive feedback is higher than that of the rural teachers and the number of positive feedback for both urban and rural teachers is more than that of the negative feedback.Moreover,the teachers from both the urban and rural schools use more “simple praise” of positive feedback and “error correction by teachers” of negative feedback.Finally,the study has some limitations due to the lack of research time and the author's personal limited academic research ability.Hence,some suggestions and limitations of the thesis are given at the end of this paper.The author only compares some aspects ofclassroom questioning and hopes to be inspired to teachers.