A Relevance-Theoretic Analysis Of The Question In English Classroom Discourse

In the foreign language classroom, teachers’ questions can provide the comprehensible target language inputand promote students’ target language output, the teachers’ questions, as important teaching skills, has receivedmany researchers’ attention. Three dimensions of teacher questioning are explored in the study: question type,question modification and feedback manners, and make the analysis of teachers’ questioning from the cognitiveperspective, put forward some reasonable proposals to promote the success of classroom communication.The subjects participating in the study are two EFL teachers and90students in paralleled classes inQiannan Middle school, Tianshui, Gansu. After analyzing the statistics taken from some transcripts of the videorecording of three classes given by the two teachers and questionnaire for students, some major findings aredemonstrated as follows:1. The novice teacher raised more display question than the proficient teacher, while the proficient teacherused more proficient questions. The response of the students’ display questions is better than the referentialquestions.2. The novice teachers employ the greatest number of evaluation feedback while proficient teacher uses less,the proficient teacher uses evaluation feedback less than the novice teacher.3. It is indicated that repetition, prompt, decomposition and paraphrase are employed in EFL classes, inlight of successful classroom communication, prompt is the most effective question modification in this study,the more appropriate modification the teacher uses, the more correct responses the students produce.4. When the teacher asks some questions, they consider the question type to ensure that the information canstimulate the students’ cognitive environment. And then, the teachers make their ways of questioning clearer andmore ostensive to convey the valuable information to students. Finally, the teachers make some modification andoffer the relevant item of information that can yield the greatest possible cognitive effects in return for thesmallest possible processing effort.The present study investigates the difference of teacher talk both the novice teacher and proficient teacher,it’s expected that the present study shed some lights on the foreign language education both pre-service andin-service teachers.