A Study On The Effect Of Teacher’s Questioning Strategies On Middle School English Classroom Reticence

English teaching requires a lot of verbal communication activities, and teacher’s questioning is one of the most important ways to activate teacher-student interaction in class. Good questioning strategies can stimulate students’ interests, and enhance students’ enthusiasm of participation. However, during the process of foreign language teaching in China, classroom reticence is serious. Students tend to keep silence in class. Obviously, many teachers can not make good use of classroom questioning to arouse students’enthusiasm of expression and participation. What is also worthy of our attention is that classroom reticence has greatly affected communication between teachers and students and set back the improvement of students’ language level. Therefore, the investigation of classroom reticence and exploration of the effect of teacher’s questioning on English classroom reticence are of great significance. It is seen that this study has great importance to turn teachers from traditional teaching concept to student-oriented concept of teaching. In addition, it benefits the theory of Second Language Acquisition.Based on input hypothesis, interaction hypothesis and theory of discourse analysis, this study does a research on teacher’s questioning and its effect on classroom reticence in middle school English class. Questions discussed in this study are listed as follows:(1) What is teacher’s actual use of questioning strategies in English classes?(2) Do teacher’s questioning strategies in English classes have an effect on students’ reticence? If yes, what is the effect?(3) What are the effective questioning strategies to reduce or avoid students’ classroom reticence?In view of the above questions, the author conducts classroom observation and questionnaire survey. Subjects participating in the study are students of Class 5 Grade 7 in Binhai Middle School. The research involves two stages:at the first stage, questionnaire survey is conducted to find out the teacher’s actual use of questioning strategies in English class. At the second stage, the author takes classroom observation and questionnaire survey to explore the effect of teacher’s questioning on middle school English classroom reticence. Besides, the author seeks for the effective questioning strategies to reduce classroom reticence according to a record of teacher’s questioning which can be seen in Appendix III.The major findings yielded from the study are summarized as follows. Firstly, when the teacher raises questions, she always has rich expressions, and tries to communicate with the students with a big smile and an eye contact. However, there are some disadvantages in her questioning strategies. For example, she always asks too many questions; questions at cognitive level are improper and some of her questions are either too difficult or too easy; students being asked are improper and high achievers are preferred to answer; waiting time of questions is inadequate; feedback of the teacher is improper and if students’ answers are incorrect, sometimes they will be scolded instead of being helped to find out the reasons why they provide such answers. Secondly, when teacher’s questions are in larger quantities, the teacher’s questions are likely to be at improper cognitive level, students being asked are improper, or the feedback of the questions are improper, the validity of teacher’s questions are therefore reduced; as a result, classroom reticence is produced. However, no matter whether waiting time of questions lasts long enough or not, it has no influence on students’ performance in class. Thirdly, effective questioning strategies such as foreshadowing questions, thinking questions, and reminding questions can improve students’enthusiasm to take part in classroom activities and can significantly reduce classroom reticence. However, low valid questions that are too easy, too difficult or vague and invalid questions such as "Is it right?" and "Yes or no?" can’t reduce classroom reticence in an effective way.This study provides some pedagogical implications for English teaching. Firstly, questions for students should be proper in number. Secondly, questions at different levels should be asked. Besides, students should be given more chances. Last but not least, timely feedback should be used.There are also some limitations of this study. Firstly, the subjects involved in this study are from Binhai No.1 Middle School, a key school in that county. They have a good foundation for study. So we are not sure whether the result of this study can represent students across different levels. Besides, class type involved in this study is reading class, so it is still not yet known whether the result of this study is applicable to other class types, especially some classes which have heavy tasks and boring processes, such as grammar class.