An Action Research On Improving An English Teacher's Classroom Questioning And Responding In Senior High School English Reading Classes For Students' Deep Learning

As the social needs for deep learning increases,how to cultivate deep learning ability in teaching has become a hot spot in education.Research on foreign language classroom teaching has shown that the teacher's effective classroom questioning and responding is an important avenue to cultivate students' deep learning ability.The success of English learning in senior high schools depends largely on the effectiveness of the teacher's questioning and responding in classroom interaction.However,from the current teaching practice of English reading in senior high schools,there are many problems in the teacher's classroom questioning and responding.For example,the teacher's classroom questioning mainly focuses on the acquisition of the surface information of reading texts rather than the interpreting of the deep meaning;the teacher's questioning strategies cannot effectively link up the text content,hence,students are in fragmented reading states;the teacher's responding cannot effectively evaluate students' answers or improve the depth of students' answers,instead,it weakens students' ability to learn and solve problems.The classroom observation shows that most of students choose to be silent when asked questions and lack of classroom participation.When passively answering questions,many students can only answer questions at lower-order thinking levels and interpret reading texts shallowly,which result in low efficiency in language learning.Those all reveal that the teacher's classroom questioning and responding in senior high school English reading classes is inefficient,and students are basically stagnated in the shallow learning state.Based on the above research background,this study focuses on the improvement of the teacher's classroom questioning and responding on students' deep learning in senior high school English reading classes.During the educational internship,the researcher adopts the action research method to explore the following two research questions.(1)What are the impacts on the depth of students' learning processes in English reading classes by improving the teacher's classroom questioning and responding?(2)What are the impacts on the depth of students' learning outcomes in English reading classes by improving the teacher's classroom questioning and responding?The action lasts for 17 weeks.In the first round of the action research,the teacher mainly optimizes the content of classroom questioning,questioning strategies and the way of questioning students to answer;in the second round of the action research,the teacher improves her classroom responding types to students' answers while further optimizing her classroom questioning.To evaluate students' deep learning in English reading classes,this study mainly constructs evaluation framework from the two dimensions of learning processes and learning outcomes.The evaluation on students' learning processes in English reading classes is from the perspective of students' classroom participation while the evaluation on students' learning outcomes is from three aspects: students' thinking levels,text interpretation and language learning.On the basis of quantitative and qualitative analysis,this study finds that: in students' learning processes,students' classroom participation deepens in English reading classes,mainly reflecting on the increase of classroom participation quantity and the growth of students' emotional,physical and thinking involvement;as to students' learning outcomes in English reading classes,first of all,students' thinking levels are improved,students' answering rates of questioning at higher-order thinking levels increase.Secondly,students' ability in text interpretation is strengthened,considering the interpreting dimensions are in multiple perspectives and students' interpreting levels change from decoding to comprehending and even to interpreting.In addition,students' language learning ability is promoted,which is prominently embodied in students' deeper analysis of the connotation of language units and more complex language output in English reading classes.According to the above findings,this study puts forward some pedagogical suggestions on how to promote students deep learning in senior high school English reading classes:(1)optimize teachers' questioning and ways of asking students to answer question,in order to promote students' emotional,physical and thinking participation;(2)balance the thinking levels of teachers' questioning content and use developmental and reorganizational responding to improve students' thinking levels;(3)set up questioning chains to promote students' text interpretation from decoding to comprehending and even to interpreting;(4)enrich the content of language knowledge in the teacher's questioning content,and adopt "diagnostic + developmental" responding to promote students' language learning and language output.