A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American High School English Teacher Questions For Promoting Students' Thinking Quality

Teacher Questions is one of the teaching skills in English classroom,which is also an important tool to promote the development of students' thinking.The National English Curriculum for High School(2017)puts forward explicitly that the specific objective of English curriculum in high schools is to cultivate and develop students' Core Competence,which includes Language Ability,Culture Awareness,Thinking Quality and Learning Ability.Thinking Quality refers to the ability and level of logical,critical and innovative thinking,and it embodies the cognitive feature of the Core Competence of the English subject.Therefore,in the social context of the English curriculum reform,it is obviously important in designing Teacher Questions.Through a comparative study of Chinese and American high school English Teacher Questions,this paper aims to cultivate and develop students' Thinking Quality,focuses on the promotion of Teacher Questions,explores the existing problems and finds solutions on designing Teacher Questions.First of all,based on some domestic and abroad research about Teacher Questions and Thinking Quality,this paper clarifies types of Teacher Questions divided by the New Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and analyzes different types of Teacher Questions.Secondly,based on the New Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and taken high school English reading class as an example,this paper explores the specific application of Chinese and American Teacher Questions using classroom observation and interview.Meanwhile it analyzes the frequency,features and types of Teacher Questions as well as the relationship between Teacher Questions and students' cognition development.The result shows from the comparative study that there is significant difference between Chinese and American Teacher Questions.For example,American teachers use more questions of Knowledge Utilization,Metacognitive System and Self-system levels than Chinese Teachers in a reading class.Finally,according to the research results,teaching suggestions are put forward as follows:Before class,teachers should set up classroom questions and predict possible answers from students,use Bloom's New Taxonomy of Educational Objectives to distribute the six types of questions reasonably in order to promote the development of students'Thinking Quality.During class,teacher should pay attention to enrich different types of Teacher Questions and throw out follow-up questions according to the students' responses.After class,teachers need to strengthen reflection and improve their ability to design questions in order to eventually promote the development of students' Thinking Quality.