A Study On The Relationship Between Teacher Questioning In English Reading Teaching And Student Critical Reading Proficiency In Senior High School

In recent years,it has become one of the important teaching objectives to cultivate students' critical thinking in subject teaching.In senior high English reading teaching,critical reading has become the top goal,for it's an effective way to cultivate students' critical thinking in reading classes.Therefore,how to guide students to read criticallyso thatto improve their critical reading proficiency has become a hot topic in the field of basicEnglish education.Previous research achievements show that teacher questioning plays anessential role in effective classroom teaching.In English reading teaching,the teacher guides students to understand,interpret,analyze,question and evaluate the information in the article and then put forward their own understandings and opinions,developing their critical thinking ability in the process of critical reading.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the relationship between teacher questioning and student critical reading proficiency,so that to explore the role of teacher questioning in cultivating students' critical thinking and developing their critical reading ability.Based on Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives and combined with critical reading theory,this study adopts the research methods of classroom observation,questionnaire and interview,aiming to find out the types and contents of questions designed by teachers for the same texts as well as to figure out the proportion of different types of questions in English reading teaching in senior high school;to know about teachers' concept of critical reading behind questioning design in reading classes and their application of it in practical teaching;to explore the relationship between teacherquestioning and student critical reading ability.Based on the results of the investigation and the conclusion of the research,the author will finally put forward some specific suggestions on how to optimize teachers' classroom questioning,so that to provide some references for English teachers in senior high school to promote students' critical thinking competence.By recording,transferring and analyzing questions designed by the four teachers of Grade two Senior High English group of Chengdu ShishiTianfu High School and by conducting questionnaires and teacher interview among the four English teachers and the students(totally 250)they teach,the researcher finds: 1)English teachers of senior high school have a good concept of critical reading;2)in general,the proportion of lower-order questions and higher-order questions(critical questions)is in accordance with the ideal criterion,which is about 60% and 40%;3)there exitsa strong positive correlation between teachers' proportion of critical questions in English reading teaching and students' critical reading proficiency.Based on the findings of the present study and the results of previous research,the author gives the following suggestions on how to optimize English teachers' questioning in reading teaching in senior high schools: firstly,to cultivate students' critical thinking and improve their critical reading ability,teachers themselves need to own critical thinking and critical reading ability first.Theoretically,teachers can read more research works in the relevant fields,so that to know about the latest teaching methodsand learn from others;practically,teachers need to study the reading materials repeatedly when preparing the class in combination with their theoretical learning and teaching experience,and then design more critical questionson the basis of their deep understanding of thereading materials.Secondly,teachers need to know students' "known zone","zone of proximal development" and "unknown zone".Effective teacher questioning is asked at the combination of the “known zone” andthe “zone of proximal development”.Therefore,teachers could design questions with different cognitive levels on the basis of the teaching content and then choose the best angle according to the teaching goal and students' actual situation.Finally,teachers need to accumulate and make full use of their own teaching wisdom in classroom teaching.When a student's answergoes beyond the teacher's expectationor surprise the others,the teacher can seize the opportunity to ask some follow-up questions so that to understand the student'sthinking clue and guide all the students to think more deeply.