A Study On Teachers' Questioning And Students' Foreign Language Anxiety In Junior Middle School English Class

Teacher's questioning has been frequently used as one of the teaching techniques to initiate classroom talk.It is of significant value for many instructional purposes,like eliciting students' reflection,improving students' ability of understanding and involving students in the classroom.Therefore,the investigation into teacher's questioning has been a crucial issue in the language teaching.Scholars and educators also propose that we should pay attention to learners' affective states and learning feelings when asking questions,adopt different methods to relieve students' anxiety properly,and then improve their learning efficiency.The present study made an investigation of the current state of questioning in junior middle school,hoping to find out the students' expectations towards teachers' questioning and the relationship between the questioning and the foreign language anxiety.The results of this research were helpful to English teaching,middle school students learning and classroom atmosphere.The findings of this survey also made possible pedagogical implications for the English course design,classroom interaction and performance assessment.This study made an investigation of the current state of teachers' questioning in Junior Middle School.In particular,the design aimed to find out the students' feedbacks towards teachers' questioning as well as the relationship between the teachers' questioning and the students' anxiety.The following questions are raised to serve these purposes:1)What's the current state of teachers' questioning in junior middle school?2)What's the students' expectations or feedbacks towards teachers' questioning?3)What's the relationship between the teachers' questioning and the students' foreign language anxiety?The present research incorporated quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate teachers' questioning in junior middle school.The participants of the present study were 100 Grade two students in No.8 Junior Middle School,who had been divided into three groups: high-achievers,mid-achievers and low-achievers,besides,16 Grade two English teachers in this Junior Middle School were also included.In the present research,three kinds of instruments were used: two questionnaires,interviews and classroom observation.The major results of this study can be listed as follows: Firstly,participants used different questioning strategies,methods and feedbacks to make the classroom interaction more active and effective.Secondly,teachers' questioning has a relationship with students' foreign language anxiety and different levels of students have different views towards questioning.Normally,the higher the achievements are,the less anxious students may feel when answering questions.Thirdly,mid-achievers are distinctive groups who show the most anxious towards teachers' questioning in some areas such as nominating,feedbacks and error correction.In light of these results,some implications are provided.Teachers are advised to pay more attention to the mid-achievers,make great efforts to improve professional skills in teaching,create situations of questioning and take good advantages of various feedbacks to satisfy the students' need.