A Comparative Study Of Questioning Strategy And Feedback Mechanism Between Chinese And International Teachers In Classroom Interaction

Teacher talk has long been a topic for academic researches.For language teaching and learning,teacher talk is regarded as the main source of students' comprehensible input.Teacher talk is an inseparable part of classroom discourse.Nowadays there is a tendency of students-oriented education,which does not mean teachers are less important.On the contrary,it sets higher standards and requirements for teachers to follow.Questioning is a technique applied by many teachers in L2 classrooms.Through questions,people exchange information and acquire more knowledge.Teachers ask questions to check students' comprehension,to call on more participation,or to know about students' performance.Generally speaking,questions raised by language teachers are divided into categories such as display questions and referential questions.Referential questions are believed by many scholars to have more value than display questions in that they accept various answers,thus promoting participation.Similarly,teachers also adopt various techniques in giving feedback.They may show approval by saying words like “Yes” and “Right.” They may provide explanation when a student fails to answer a question.They may identify students' mistakes.The present paper observed six teachers' classes.They teach in one key university in Wuhan and their students are all English majors.Eight classes of each teacher were observed.The classes were all audio recorded.After class,the audio recordings were transcribed and analyzed.Four teachers had interviews discussing opinions on questioning and feedback.Also,questionnaires were sent out to students to gather more ideas.Through all these methods,the present paper attempts to answer the following questions:1.How do teachers apply questions to realize interaction with students?2.What feedback do teachers tend to give based on students' response?3.How do teachers modify their feedback to encourage more output from students?4.In terms of teacher question and feedback,is there any major difference between Chinese teachers and international teachers?All teachers were found to apply more display questions than referential questions in class.Some teachers ask a lot more questions than others.In giving feedback,all teachers prefer positive feedback.Yet international teachers tend to ask more referential questions than Chinese teachers during feedback.Based on these findings and students' opinions shown in the questionnaires,some suggestions were made for L2 teaching.In the end,the paper lists its limitations and calls for further study.