A Study On Reading Classroom Questioning Of Demonstration English Classes Of Junior High Schools

Classroom questioning, as a kind of bilateral interaction between teachers and students, generally refers to the teachers’ inquiry to students’ opinions or attitudes towards a certain teaching content through verbal expressions in the process of classroom teaching. Classroom questioning, as an important part of teaching, is viewed as one of the most frequently used ways for teachers to guide students to read in an English reading class. Effective classroom questioning can not only stimulate students’ consciousness of participation, but also help students comprehend the reading texts better. According to the literature, empirical studies about reading classroom questioning are relatively less. Moreover, studies of classroom questioning of teachers who attend demonstration reading classes are rarer. So it is necessary to have a further tentative look at the classroom questioning of the demonstration class teachers in English reading teaching in order to find out some principles of effective classroom questioning, and consequently improve the effectiveness of English reading teaching in junior middle schools.The author chose 16 English reading classes from The 10 th National Demonstration Junior English Classroom Teaching Cases as research samples. The study adopted classroom observation and video analysis as research instruments, and excel was used for the statistical analysis. The study mainly investigated the types and frequencies of classroom questioning from pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading stages. The research questions are as follows:1) What are the types and frequencies of classroom questioning used in different stages of reading class in terms of communicative functions?(including display question and referential question) 2) What are the types and frequencies of classroom questioning used in different stages of reading class in terms of Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive level?(including knowledge question, comprehension question, application question, analysis question, synthesis question, evaluation question) 3) What are the types and frequencies of classroom questioning used in different stages of reading class in terms of the ways of students answering questions?(including nominating, chorus-answering, volunteering, teacher self-answering)The major findings are as follows: 1) In pre-reading stage, display questions account for 38.1% while referential questions account for 61.9%. In while-reading stage, the percentages of the two kinds of questions respectively are 76.3% and 23.7%. In post-reading stage, the percentages of the two kinds of questions respectively are 20.8% and 79.2%. It shows that the frequencies of display questions and referential questions are different in three stages of reading classes. 2) As for the question types according to Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive levels, the frequencies of the six kinds of questions used in pre-reading stage rank from high to low are: knowledge questions(42%), comprehension questions(31%), application questions(19%), synthesis questions(4%),analysis questions(3%) and evaluation questions(1%). In while-reading stage, the frequencies of the six kinds of questions used rank from high to low are: comprehension questions(32%), application questions(26%), analysis questions(18%), evaluation questions(9%), knowledge questions(8%) and synthesis questions(7%). In post-reading stage, the frequencies of the six kinds of questions used rank from high to low are: analysis questions(26%), application questions(21%), synthesis questions(18%),comprehension questions(15%), evaluation questions(13%) and knowledge questions(7%). It shows that synthesis questions and evaluation questions are seldom used in three reading stages. However, knowledge questions and comprehension questions are used frequently in reading classes. 3) As for the ways of students’ answering questions, the frequencies of the four ways used in pre-reading stage rank from high to low are: volunteering(40.3%), nominating(28.6%), chorus-answering(25.1%) and teacher self-answering(6%). In while-reading stage, the frequencies of the four ways used rank from high to low are: nominating(48.3%),volunteering(23.6%), chorus-answering(14.2%) and teacher self-answering(13.9%). In post-reading stage, the frequencies of the four ways used rank from high to low are: volunteering(43.7%), chorus-answering(31.7%), nominating(24.6%) and teacher self-answering(0%). It shows that nominating and volunteering are the most frequently used ways in reading classes. The percentage of teacher self-answering is relatively low, which is helpful to stimulate students’ awareness of cooperation.