A Study Of Questioning And Interaction In High Vocational And Technical English Classrooms

Classroom questioning is one of the major ways for classroom communication betweenteachers and students, which is also the basis of classroom interaction. Therefore, it is one of thekey teaching skills that teachers should master in teaching practice. As a kind of teachingactivity, classroom questioning has attracted the attention of most language teachers. Thepurpose for teachers to propose questions in class is to arouse students’ interest and createfavorable conditions for active class atmosphere, thus improving teaching quality andeffectiveness. Compared with other courses, the impact of classroom questioning on languagelearning is more obvious. The reason lies in that the goal of language study is to help students toacquire communicative competence which can only be realized in real language context byrepetitive practices. Classroom questioning can be regarded as communicative language contextset by teachers in class to help students gain communicative competence in theasking-and-answering process. On the other hand, English language teaching is composed ofvarious classroom interactions. Classroom interaction can not be separated from classroomquestioning and the two are complementary to each other. To study the relationship betweenquestioning and interaction will have a positive effect on improving teaching efficiency. Atpresent, in the students-centered teaching mode, the effect of classroom questioning oninteraction has drawn much attention among language researchers. However, the study ofclassroom questioning at home and abroad has only been focused on the function, category,strategy and skills of questioning. And the study of classroom questioning has mostly beenconfined to secondary schools or universities whereas the study is quite limited in highvocational and technical colleges (hereafter HVTC). With the development of Chineseeducational system, HVTC have been playing a more and more important role in our societyand have become an important component of Chinese higher education.On the basis of classroom questioning at home and abroad and under the guidance of input,output and interaction theories as well as social constructivist approach, this paper integrates theresearch methods of classroom observation, questionnaires and interview to make aninvestigation. The research subjects are based on six English teachers and230non-Englishmajor students from Weifang University of Science and Technology (hereafter WFUST). By attending classes, recording and transcribing, the writer makes an analysis on an intensivereading class of each subject teacher from the perspective of types of questions, distribution ofquestions, wait-time, feedbacks to questions and questioning strategies. To have a morecomprehensive understanding of students and teachers’ expectations and requirements onclassroom questioning, the writer conducts two questionnaires on the subject students and18teachers from the public English teachers’ office separately. The writer also interviews the sixsubject teachers about their opinion on classroom questioning and interaction to further deepenthe knowledge of classroom questioning and interaction in HVTC.By the analysis of qualitative and quantitative study, the results shows that in most classesof HVTC, the number of display questions is far more than that of referential ones while themajority of students preferred to be asked about the latter ones. In terms of distribution ofquestions, teachers tend to allocate questions to the students sitting in the front and middle partof the class as well as students who are active and perform well in their studies. In order to havesufficient time to think over the questions, students expect their teachers to prolong thewait-time after questioning. When it comes to feedback, students have a preference for theirteachers to provide more detailed and specific explanation and comments rather than directcriticism. Most students suggest that they can accept their teachers to point out their mistakesdirectly. The questioning strategy which teachers employ less and students preferred more isprompting.In order to optimize classroom questioning and improve teaching efficiency in Englishclassrooms of HVTC, the writer offers her perspective on classroom questioning and points outthat teachers should employ more referential questions in teaching practice and adopt effectivequestioning strategies and feedback to activate classroom questioning so as to help studentsbuild their self-confidence and create more opportunities for their language output. It is hopedthat English teachers of HVTC will benefit from this study, thus changing the conventionalconcept of teaching and employing proper questioning strategies to promote classroominteraction.