An Investigation On Teachers' Questioning Techniques In College English Major Classes

Since early 1970s, the approach of communicative language teaching has become more and more popular. One of its major principles is that students are taught for the purpose of communication, and the class is characterized by classroom interaction between the teacher and students and among students themselves. The effectiveness of this approach is determined by the function of the teacher in classroom to a great extent. The function of the teacher in classroom is mainly realized through the teacher's talking. During the teacher's talking, questioning is a vital aspect. Teachers at all levels of schooling ask numerous questions to their students, and a great deal of time in class is occupied by the question-and-answer sessions. This dissertation is to study teachers' in-class questioning techniques from the point of view of the relationship between teachers' beliefs and practices. This qualitative study would not only reveal further information of the status quo of the teaching practice but also provide valuable insights into teacher education and development programs.It is necessary for us to make an analysis of the relevant researches about teaching before we explore the questioning. From the variety of definitions and explanations of language, we infer some basic features of language, such as "systematic", "arbitrary", "for communication", "generative", "creative" and so on. Among these features, "communication" is regarded as the essence and the ultimate goal of language. During communication, there is always a speaker and a hearer, and there is always a desire forsuccessful communications both from the point of view of the speaker and the hearer. And in most communicative activities persons act as both senders and receivers. In fact, this is a kind of interaction between the communication participants. In language teaching classroom, this interaction not only exists, but also plays an important part in the process of teaching and learning, because if it is planned and guided properly, students will benefit a lot and achieve great progress. However, the effectiveness of the interaction is to a great extent determined by the roles the teacher plays in classroom. Although the teacher plays various roles in classroom, on the whole the teacher is a facilitator of learning, especially in communicative language teaching. No doubt the teacher performs the roles through his talking in most cases. Therefore, questioning is an important part in the teacher's talking and it is an effective device to serve educative purpose in classroom.According to Dillon (1988: 1), since the time that Socrates first exemplified their use, questions have become effective techniques for exploring right answers. A large number of observations and investigations indicate that questioning is one of the most dominant instructional techniques in classroom and teachers at all levels ask questions in quantities every school day. The literature also provides sufficient information about questioning. Although questions play different roles or are employed for different purposes in different contexts, the functions of questions are mainly grouped into three broad areas: diagnostic, instructional, and motivational. And at any one time, a single question may serve more than one of these functions. As for questions themselves, they can be categorized from different perspectives. Among these categorizing perspectives, two ways are more popular. One is from an overall angle, and the other is from the point of view of functions. In terms of teachers, questioning can be done in a trice, but in fact it is not so easy as it looks. It involves at least ten aspects that a teacher has to consider when presenting a question: usage, quantity, kind, topic, form, addressee, timing, manner, presumptions, and purpose. Even in case the teacher does not sense the existing of some aspects, the ten aspects always work together potentially. Therefore how to ask effective questions or how to be a good questioner is an inevitable and urgent problem for teachers. G...