A Comparative Case Study On Teacher Question Types Between Male And Female Teachers In Junior Middle School

In contemporary society,classroom teaching is still the main form of English teaching practice in which students receive language input and produce language output.Teachers and students interact mainly through questioning in the classroom.Males and females teachers have different discourse styles,and thus differences exist in the types of question between male and female English teachers.Based on the theory of IRF discourse analysis theory and qualitative research,two questions are studied with two males and females teachers in a middle school.The first question is what the differences exist between the types of questions asked by male and female teacher.The second one is what the reasons are for the differences in the types of questions between male and female teachers.Through data processing and analysis based on classroom observation,classroom recording and interview,it is found that there are five differences in the types of question for junior middle school English teachers of different genders,which are differences in the choices and application for open questions and referential questions,closed questions and display questions,conversational questions,procedural questions and the using of “false questions”.These differences are mainly reflected as follows: male teachers are more inclined to choose open questions and referential questions,while female teachers are more likely to choose closed questions and display questions;for conversational questions,male teachers are better at launching new questions;Female teachers use procedural questions and “false questions” more frequently compared to male teachers.Based on collected data and previous scholars' research and analysis,this study analyzes such four reasons as social status,language behavior,ways of thinking and choice of voice and vocabulary for the differences in the types of questions asked by male and female English teachers in junior middle school.This research presents some teaching implication for how to better recognize the differences in questioning types for male and female teacher,what to learn from each other between male and female teachers,how to enrich questioning discourse turns,and how to improve the application of questioning types for male and female teachers.