A Research On Questioning In The Classroom Of Senior English Reading

Second language classroom research, of which classroom discourse is a vital part, is animportant branch of the study of second language acquisition. Questioning in the classroomtakes half of classroom discourse, which proves its importance in second language classroomresearch.Questioning is the key point of classroom discourse in the classroom of the SeniorEnglish reading. It plays an important part not only in English teaching, but also in Englishlearning. In order to answer how the novice teachers and the proficient teachers usequestioning in the classroom of the Senior English reading, the writer first introduces thebackground, significance and purpose of the study. Second, she gives the definitions of noviceteachers and proficient teachers and discusses the research situation of questioning in theclassroom at home and abroad. Finally, based on Krashen’s Comprehensible Input Hypothesis,Long’s Interaction Hypothesis and Swain’s Output Hypothesis, the writer adopts classroomobservation, transcription of two novice teachers and two proficient teachers in the way oflive recording and questionnaire to analyze questioning in the classroom of the Senior Englishreading. Based on the collected information, the writer makes a comparative study betweennovice teachers and proficient teachers on the type of questioning, teachers’ questioningstrategies and the type of students’ answering. The results of the investigation are as follows:Firstly, proficient teachers ask more referential questions than the novice teachers. Secondly,proficient teachers are better at using different questioning strategies according to differentstudents and classroom situations to arouse the students’ enthusiasm learning. Finally, there isno obvious difference in the type of answering between the students of the novice teachersand those of the proficient teachers because most of them answer in simple sentences.The results of the study provide some enlightenment for senior English teaching.Teachers are advised to ask more referential questions and use more questioning strategies toencourage students to output high quality answers while students are encouraged to answerquestions in compound sentences. In order to improve teachers’ teaching skills, the school could carry out micro-teaching and let novice teachers observe and analyze the excellentteachers’ teaching activities.