A Comparative Case Analysis On The Cognitive Levels Of English Classroom Questioning Of Native English Speaker And Chinese Teacher Of English

The research on English teachers’ classroom questions is a hot topic for many scholars,but there is less research on cognitive levels of the classroom questions.At present,how to improve students’ accurate cognition through classroom questions is the crucial direction of compound talents training in the 21 st century.Good classroom questions can help students think deeply about how they can use the knowledge they are learning and promote students’ deep thinking.Besides,they can be beneficial to expanding students’ knowledge,as well as their thinking,and stimulating students’ curiosity,imagination,interest and potentials.Consequently,their deep learning would be developed.The author adopted the revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives to investigate the cognitive levels of classroom questions raised by native English speaker and Chinese teachers of English in junior high schools.The main research questions of this study are as following:(1)What main levels of cognitive thinking do native English speaker and Chinese teacher of English focus on in classroom questions in junior high school?(2)How does the cognitive level of Chinese teacher of English and native English speaker’ s classroom questions change in different grades at junior high school?By means of classroom observation and interview,this research is the comparative analysis for classroom questions of two native English speaker and two domestic ones of English in Grade 7 and Grade 8 of X Middle School in Changchun.Some similarities and differences can be found.For instances,both of them pay more attention to the low cognitive level questions,such as remembering,understanding and applying.In addition,the result shows that Chinese teacher of English has the awareness of improving the cognitive levels of classroom question according to grades.However,there are more low cognitive level questions in native English speaker’ class,which shows that native English speaker lack correct understandings of the rules of students’ cognitive development.Therefore,some suggestions could be put forward.Firstly,English teachers need to fully consider the students’ cognitive development levels at first and then design classroom questions.That is to say,classroom questions should not be formalism but effective.Secondly,Chinese teacher of English and native English speaker are suggested to increase the chances of communication so that teaching factors for students could be considered well and deliver questions in accordance with students’ aptitude.In the end,the foreign teacher market in China should be standardized and institutionalized.It is important to purify the foreign teacher market and make the foreign teacher classes more efficient.The author hopes that this research can be helpful to raise English teachers’ attention to classroom questions.Besides,it would be significant for professional training to both native English speaker and domestic teachers of English.