A Case Study Of The Effect Of Teachers’ Questioning On English Class Interaction In Grade Seven

As an important media, teachers’ talk has always been paid attention in the classroom teaching. Especially in the English classroom, the teachers’ talk is not only viewed as main language output and input in the process of teaching, but also regarded as the significant basis of influencing and improving the quality of classroom interaction. While the teachers’ questioning as the main part of teachers’ talk, its frequency and types, the distribution, the techniques, and the feedback all have an influence on the effect of students’ language output and participation in classroom activities. This research makes an analysis of some problems that exist in the English teachers’ questioning in grade seven, which is on the basis of Krashen’s input hypothesis and affective filter hypothesis, Swain’s output hypothesis, and Michael long’s interaction theory, and provides some suggestions according to the students’ questionnaires and teachers’ interview.The author chooses three teachers and their classes in a middle school in Shi Jiazhuang as the subjects of the research. The researcher adopts the method of naturalistic inquiry, through observing the whole presentation of three teachers, and transcribing the record into written materials so as to analyze the figures of the influence of teachers’ questioning on classroom interaction. This research manages to collect data and analyzes mainly from five respects, that is, the frequency and types of teachers’ questioning, teachers’ wait time, the distributions of teachers’ questions, the techniques of teachers’ questioning, and teachers’ feedback. Meanwhile, this research which combines the results of students’ questionnaires and teachers’ interview makes a further description for the attitudes and perspectives of the influence of teachers’ questioning on classroom interaction.The results of this research are summarized as follows:(1) The teachers propose more superficial questions than deeper questions in English language classroom teaching. But the effect of the deeper questions proposed by teachers is better than superficial questions in promoting the students’ target language output and participation in the classroom interaction.(2) Most of the students want to be given longer time to think deeply after the teachers put forward the questions.(3) After questioning, the teachers always nominate some students to answer the questions and answer together by the whole class.(4) Teachers use various questioning techniques, but most adopt redirecting and repetition, few chaining and probing strategies.(5) For teachers’ feedback, the teachers have already realized the importance of praise, and not only give students enough praise, but also provide explanation and comments for students’ reply.According to the results from the above survey, this research comes to the following suggestions:(1) In the English classroom, the teachers should be aware of increasing the deeper questions so as to stimulate the students to think deeply and take part in the classroom activities actively.(2) After raising the questions, the teachers should provide enough time for students’ thoughts, but the wait time should not be so long.(3) The teachers should encourage students to answer the questions as much as possible, because the volunteers are helpful to improve the effect of classroom interaction.(4) For teachers’ questioning strategies, the chaining and probing strategies are more beneficial to the students’ language output and create a harmonious interaction atmosphere.Due to the limitation of this survey, this topic about some aspects of the influence of teachers’ questioning on classroom interaction should be further found and researched.