A Correlational Study Of Teachers' Questioning Strategies And Students' Answering Quality In Senior High School Reading Class

Researchers abroad and at home have carried out a variety of studies probing into teachers'questioning strategies.Recently,studies are not restricted to teachers' questioning strategies but convert to the relationship between teachers' questioning strategies and the complexity of students' answers and to the effect of teachers' questioning strategies on the interaction level.However,there has been little study to inquiry into teachers' questioning strategies and students'answering in high schools.Therefore,this research probed the relationship between teachers'questioning strategies and students' answering quality on the basis of interaction hypothesis and discourse analysis.This study adopted Anderson's classification of teachers'question types as "remembering","understanding","applying","analyzing","evaluating" and "creating".Students' answering quality was analyzed from two aspects:accuracy and complexity.This study tried to answer the following questions(1)What is the distribution of teachers,questioning strategies(question types,feedback types and respondent selection)in high school students' reading class?(2)What are the accuracy and complexity of students' answering in high school students'reading class?(3)What is the relationship between teachers' questioning strategies and students'answering quality in high school students' reading class?This study investigated six English reading video lessons from an official platform,National Educational Resources Public Service Platform.These lessons are typically excellent cases presented by the Ministry of Education to shed light on teachers.That is to say teachers may be inspired on what types of questions to be raised,what types of feedback to be provided,and what kind of respondent selection to be employed,through which students' learning would be improved to some degree.The major findings were as follow.Firstly,in high school students' reading class the most popular question types were"remembering questions" and "understanding questions",while "applying questions" never appeared.There was a significant difference between frequency of questions at high cognitive levels and that of questions at low cognitive levels.More often teachers simply repeated and praised students'answers."Appointing","volunteer" and "in chorus" were the most popular among five forms of respondent selection,and "ignoring" never occurred.Secondly,the overwhelming majority of the answers were correct both in grammar and meaning,and there was no answer which was wrong both in grammar and meaning.What's more,most of the answers consisted of "words or phrases",or "simple sentences".Thirdly,question types did not affect accuracy of students;answers,but they influenced the complexity of students' answers.It was found that answers of question types at high cognitive level were usually made up of complicated answers.Additionally,there was a high probability that teachers praised answers which were correct both in grammar and meaning,and that they did not repeat or praise answers consisting of complicated sentences.Teachers'responses were most probably not "complicated sentences" but "words or phrases".And it was easy to find grammatical mistakes in answers from students who were appointed,and answers of questions responded in chorus usually consisted of words or phrases.This study has some pedagogical implications.Firstly,teachers are expected not to ignore"the applying questions" when questioning.Secondly,it will be better if teachers praise students more often.Thirdly,teachers are advised to raise more questions at high cognitive level,because questions at high cognitive level tend to elicit complicated answers.