Classroom Questioning Features Of Experienced And Less Experienced English Teachers In Junior High School

The present study mainly focuses on classroom questioning features of two English teachers with different teaching ages in Grade Seven of the Foreign Language School affiliated to Wuhan University.Through the comparative analysis between the teaching reality of the two teachers and the expectations of their students with different achievement,the present research aims to investigate the following three questions:(1)What are the differences between the experienced and less experienced English teacher in terms of their classroom question types and questioning strategies?(2)What are students' expectations towards their teacher's questioning features in terms of question types and questioning strategies?(3)What are the specific conflictions between the teaching reality of both teachers with different teaching ages and the expectations of their students with different achievement?Altogether,the author observed 10 English classes,prepared interviews for the experienced teacher(ET)and the less experienced teacher(LET)according to the results of classroom observation after class and surveyed 99 students with real-name questionnaires.During classroom observation,the author recorded the seating chart of the students being questioned.And in order to discover specific conflictions between the teaching reality of two teachers and the expectations of students with different achievement,students were divided into 4 groups according to their average score(AS)in five consecutive tests in this term,namely,students with excellent,good,average and poor achievement.Through the comparative analysis,we derived the following findings:(1)Display questions take up a majority of classroom questions in both teachers'classes,and the ET raises more referential questions than the LET.Both teachers tend to adopt the strategy of repeating and redirecting,and they seldom employ the strategy of paraphrasing.The ET tries to avoid adopting translation and makes efforts to employ prompting and probing.Whereas,the LET adopts translation occasionally and rarely employs prompting and probing.(2)There exist no obvious differences about the expectations of students in both classes.Most students expect their teacher would raise display questions,and quite a few students hope their teacher would design some kind of referential questions according to but beyond the textbook,namely within their ZPD(zone of proximal development).In both classes,prompting,redirecting and translation are the top three strategies that are quite popular among students,fewer students prefer the strategy of paraphrasing and probing,and most of students don't favor the strategy of repeating.(3)There exist some conflictions and consistency between the teaching reality of both teachers and the expectations of students with different achievement.Firstly,the strategy of repeating is the least popular among students despite of their achievement.Secondly,those students with poor achievement expect their teacher would adopt some accessible strategy to help them directly,such as translation.Thirdly,prompting is widely expected by students with average,good and excellent achievement,especially students whose AS is above 90,which indicates that they are eager to explore the right answer initiatively.Fourthly,redirecting is quite popular among students whose AS is below 110,especially students with average and poor achievement.Lastly,paraphrasing and probing are widely expected by students whose AS is above 90.And probing is most popular among students with excellent achievement.Based on the above findings,the author puts forward some pedagogical implications for both teachers,especially the LET.Firstly,it will be a good step forward for the LET to properly increase the number of referential questions in the course of teaching.Secondly,the LET should try to avoid adopting the strategy of translation from the perspective of Second Language Acquisition and make efforts to help students with poor achievement build scientific English learning strategy.Thirdly,for students with good and excellent achievement,the LET should put emphasis on leading them to explore the right answer actively by adopting the strategy of prompting and probing.Lastly,both teachers should try to avoid unnecessary repetition during classroom teaching and employ paraphrasing appropriately among students with good and excellent achievement in order to guide them to think in English.