Research On The Cultivation Of Students’ Thinking Quality Through Teachers’ Questioning In English Reading Teaching In Senior High School

After the key competencies in English subject were put forward,cultivating students’ thinking quality,as an essential part in English teaching,attracts more attention.In English classes,teachers’ questioning plays an important role in developing students’ thinking quality.It can train the agility and flexibility of students’ thinking,encourage complex thinking,and arouse critical and creative thinking.Some scholars have conducted researches on thinking qualities,especially critical and creative thinking.Some other studies were about teachers’ questioning,such as analyzing the characteristics and shortcomings of teachers’ questioning.Though there are plenty of researches in these two fields,few of them combine the two aspects,so it is necessary to further study teachers’ questioning in terms of cultivating students’ thinking quality.This thesis tries to investigate the current situation of teachers’ questioning in English reading class in terms of cultivating students’ thinking quality,explore the influencing factors of the situation and find out teachers’ needs in improving their questioning skills aiming at cultivating students’ thinking quality,with the hope of providing practical suggestions on better improving students’ thinking quality.In order to investigate the current situation of teachers’ questioning in terms of cultivating students’ thinking quality in English reading classes,20 English reading classes were recorded and transcribed in this study,and the current situation is analyzed according to Bloom’s classification of questions.Then,for the purpose of knowing the influencing factors of this situation,questionnaires were conducted among four districts in Hebei Province.The gathered data were subjected to statistic analysis by SPSS13.0.Finally,face-to-face interviews were carried out with 5 English teachers,for the purpose of clarifying some conflicting and confusing results from the questionnaire data and searching for more extensive information.Major findings are as follows: 1)Although it seems that all levels of thinking can be cultivated in teachers’ questioning in English reading classes,there is an obvious lack of high order thinking questions.Among all the thinking qualities,criticalness is relatively emphasized while complexity is not.2)Of all the influencing factors,teachers’ teaching experience and training experience make the greatest difference.Besides,students’ English proficiency and exams of all sorts affect teachers’ questioning much.3)In order to improve their questioning skills aiming at cultivating students’ thinking quality,teachers are eager for opportunities of intensive face-to-face training on weekdays in other cities,in which they could observe excellent lessons taught by superior teachers,discuss with fellow teachers and receive guidance from experts.Based on these findings,suggestions are put forth on how to improve teachers’ questioning skills thus cultivating students’ thinking quality more effectively.It is hoped that findings in this thesis can provide enlightenment in developing students’ thinking quality and improving their key competencies.Besides,this study is expected to inspire more attention on this aspect and further research.