A Study On The Effects Of Teachers’ Question Design On High School Students’ English Reading Comprehension

The senior high school English teaching mainly develops learners’abilities to obtain and process information, so the main contents of reading texts (take People’s Education Press as an example)have various genres. Reading texts are presented in the form of questions, distributed in three stages:pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading. From the first introduction before class to the new class presentations then until the task production, all are problem-centered. Thus, the question design of senior high school English teaching almost penetrates through the whole process of English reading teaching, so naturally, as an English teacher, question types and qualities have an very important impact on students’English reading. High quality questions can guide students to accomplish tasks creatively and understand texts in more depth, at the same time, questions also promote the development of learners’ comprehensive language application abilities and creative thinking abilities.Based on this, this study combines qualitative and quantitative methods such as classroom record method, questionnaire investigation method and interview method, taking students in three science parallel classes, three substitute teachers and their classroom records as the study objects. This study mainly focuses on two questions, one is teachers’ question design may produce what kinds of effects on students’reading abilities, the other is how foreign language teachers provide strong supports for learners’ English reading comprehension through designing questions. The results of the study show that three teachers’ question design affect students’ interest in reading, thinking abilities as well as reading strategies. The questions lack of cohesion and context fail to fully highlight the key teaching points, deepen the text and do not play due role in support; The questions that emphasize knowledge rather than emotions fail to arouse students’interest in reading and promote the development of students’thinking abilities. Behind this invalid questions, three teachers also talk about their difficulties:under the pressure of the college entrance examination, their main target is to enhance students’ scores of the college entrance exam, therefore, teachers’ question design is given priority to language knowledge and test-taking strategies, which doesn’t effectively cultivate students’ reading abilities.According to above research results, this study provides some concrete suggestions on how to create question situations, how to highlight the key teaching points through questions, how to help students to connect the whole text by using questions and how to make use of questions to cultivate students’ reading strategies, hoping that students’ reading abilities will be promoted effectively through teachers’ question design which can build effective scaffolding.