Research On Teacher's Questioning Strategies In Junior English Classes From The Perspective Of Critical Thinking(CT)

The Senior Middle School English Curriculum Standards(2017 edition)stipulates that the ultimate objective of English curriculum is to foster English learners' subject matter core competencies,which is composed of four key dimensions: language ability,cultural awareness,thinking skills,and learning capacity.Critical thinking(CT),as one of the key components of thinking skills,has aroused great attention among language teaching researchers and practitioners.However,the ways of actualizing CT in teaching activities,especially in Chinese context,have not been well established.As we know in the field of EFL,current understanding of language learning has transcended from the traditional views of learning the linguistic knowledge,such as grammatical structures,to the more communicative competence of using language in doing something.Accordingly,CT skills in language use become the pivotal part in promoting language learners' communicative competence.At same time,it is believed that teacher questioning plays a pivotal role in initiating English learners' thinking and problem-solving,especially in Chinese basic educational context,because classrooms are the only situation in which English can be fully used to improve their communicative competence.Therefore,proper and appropriate uses of teacher questioning strategies are significant in promoting language learners' CT abilities of using language to do something in the classroom.Taking CT as the starting-point,this study intends to explore teacher's questioning in classroom context,by which how English learners' CT skills can be enhanced.By using the empirical research methods in collecting data,such as classroom observation,questionnaire,and in-depth interview,this research,taking a junior high school as a case study,mainly revolves around four key questions: 1)How does the teacher understand the role of questioning in the cultivation of CT? 2)Which CT skills does teacher questioning usually point to? 3)What are the general patterns of teacher questioning used by English teachers in classroom to aid learner's language learning? 4)Based on the cultivation of CT skills of English learners,what implements can be given to help teachers to improve the quality of TQ?The study finds that teachers value the cultivation of CT,but their understanding of concepts is not systematic.For CT skills,questioning mainly focuses on cultivating interpretation and analysis skills.There is insufficient attention to evaluation and self-regulation skills.In addition,based upon the analysis of data,this research argues that the general patterns of teacher questioning in practice seem to be more traditional and less diversified.Probing is the most commonly used questioning strategy for questions pointed to CT skills.More than half of these questions are answered by nominating,and the number of questions for literal understanding is the highest.Such preferences of posing questions naturally lead to learners' passive responses to the questions and,to a certain degree,hinder or delay learners' use of CT skills.Based on the above findings,this article proposes suggestions on teacher training,evaluation criteria,and optimization of curriculum resources in order that English teachers in basic educational practice should be well armed with the knowledge of how to use different questioning strategies effectively to facilitate English learners' improvement of CT skills and further of subject matter core competency.