A Comparative Study Of Classroom Questioning Between Novice Teachers And Expert Teachers In Senior High School

Classroom questioning is an important means of classroom teaching. It can promoteemotional communication between teachers and students. It is also an important source ofinput for students (Nunan1991:189). By teachers’ questioning,“Teachers can not onlyinvolve students into communication interaction, and also encourage their students to modifytheir own speech and makes it comprehensive”(Richards&Lockhart,1996:185). Therefore,the research on teachers’ questioning has an important significance for teaching. However, thestudy of teachers’ classroom questioning mostly focuses on the college English class andseldom on research of high school classroom. In this study, based on the previous studies athome and abroad, the author tries to explore the differences and similarities of the classroomquestionings between the expert teachers and the novice teachers in terms of questioningtypes, questioning strategies, distribution of the questions, wait time, answering way ofstudents, the teachers’ feedback and the reflection after class.In this study, two expert teachers, two novice teachers and196students are selected asthe research objects. The research objects are chosen from a senior high school in Yun Chengcity. These two expert teachers are the excellent academic leaders, and both of them havebeen teaching for over10years and have senior title. The two novice teachers both areprimary teachers who have been teaching for two years. The students’ participants come formthe classes of these four teachers.Based on the data analysis from the classroom observation video, questionnaire andinterview, it is revealed that expert teachers and novice teachers have something in common.Both of them use more display questions than referential question. In addition, expert teachersand novice teachers can use questioning strategies. And this two type teachers do not offerenough time for students to answer. However, there are big differences on classroom questioning between novice teachers and expert teachers. Although, most of teachers havelaid emphasis on the questioning, the expert teachers propose more questions than the noviceteachers. The expert teachers do better in the preparation of the questioning and the expertteachers are more familiar with the teaching material and students’ current learning level thanthe novice teachers. During the questioning, as for the expert teachers, the proportion of thereferential questions and display questions is more reasonable than the novice teachers.Although both the expert teachers and novice teachers use questioning strategies in class, theexpert teachers prefer use probing, while the novice teachers prefer repeating and explaining.The expert teachers offer more wait time than the novice teachers. Compared with the noviceteachers, the expert teachers can give more opportunity to encourage students volunteered toanswer. In the aspect of teachers’ feedback, two type teachers can use positive feedback, butthere are also different. The expert teachers make more reflection than the novice teachersafter class. Finally, according to the results of the analysis, the author gives some suggestionsfor improving the teachers’ classroom questioning.Due to the limited conditions as well as the limitations of the author’s research capacity,this research has certain defects, this article make a comparative study between the teachersonly from several characteristics of classroom questioning. It will provide a referencesuggestion for improving the teachers’ classroom questioning ability and improving theteaching quality.