A Pragmatic Study On The Functions And Strategies Of EFL Reading Classroom Questioning In Senior High Schools Under Speech Act Theory

A successful class can't live without excellent questioning.Only through highquality questioning can learners' minds be stimulated and their potential be exerted fully.It's not merely a tool to facilitate classroom teaching,but a delicate art both in its form and content presented to realize certain purposes of teacher.This study explored the characteristics of EFL reading classroom questioning in senior high schools.Taking speech act theory as its theoretical basis,and Bloom's taxonomy objective as a guideline,this empirical study conducts its research through careful observation and analysis of ten EFL reading classroom videos online.This study examines the classroom questioning mainly from three perspectives,the illocutionary points,namely the pragmatic functions,the forms and the cognitive level of questions,as well as the strategies used in realizing different functions.According to the study,there are six kinds of illocutionary points of classroom questioning,including instructive function,directive function,interactive function,inquiry function,expressive function and feedback function.Among them,instructive function,directive function and interactive function are listed as the top three.It also finds the functions and forms of questions are not one to one correspondent.One illocutionary point can be realized by several forms of questions,and vice versa.As for the characteristics of questions,their frequencies and cognitive levels are calculated.Wh-questions are on the top of the list,followed by yes-no questions,declarative questions and tag questions.Apart from the syntactic features,classroom questioning also features successiveness,repetition and simplification.With regard to cognitive levels,questions concerning low-level thinking such as remembering and understanding account for the most proportion,while questions with higher-order thinking are far less.This paper also finds that to realize instructive function,supportive moves,followup questions and paraphrasing are the major methods taken in most classroom questioning.To realize directive function,hedged performative,suggestory formula and preparatory are the main strategies.Plural ‘we',as a representative of person deixis is widely welcomed among teachers to realize interactive function so that a comfortable and harmonious learning environment can be made.This research focuses on the illocutionary points of each question,the question forms and strategies as well as the cultivation of students' critical and deeper thinking through reading.Through the reflection of the current questioning situation,it sheds some light on a more effective and high-quality reading classroom questioning,and raises some suggestions to the improvement of the classroom questioning.