A Research On The Impacts Of Teachers’ Questioning Types On The Students’ Oral Output In Senior High School English Classes

In China, students mainly acquire the knowledge of English in classes where teachers’ questioning is an indispensable part. Of all the aspects concerning questioning, the questioning categorization has drawn more and more attention. To inspire high school English teachers to provide more opportunities for students to produce oral output by way of asking questions effectively in classes, this study aims at exploring the questioning types of high school English teachers and the impacts of the questioning types upon their students’oral output.The subjects of this research are the six English teachers in Senior Grade One in one senior high school in the eastern part of China and the students in the corresponding six key classes they teach. With the instruments of classroom observation and the interviews, this thesis specifically explores the answers to the following three research questions:1) what are the ratios of teachers’ different questioning types in senior high school English reading classes? 2) what are the impacts of teachers’ different questioning types on the amount of students’oral output in senior high school English reading classes? and 3) what are the impacts of teachers’different questioning types on the syntactic complexity of students’oral output in senior high school English reading classes?In this research, two entire English reading classes of each selected teacher are observed and recorded and all the recorded lessons are transcribed for analysis. The interviewees consist of the six selected teachers and twelve students chosen from the selected classes. The semi-structured interviews are carried out in Chinese and the whole process is recorded. The results are transcribed into English and then the transcriptions are used as the supplementary information for the analysis of the research findings.The research findings of the present study are threefold. Firstly, in senior high school English reading classes, in terms of the form of questioning, the English teachers mostly ask x-questions, followed by translation questions, nexus questions and alternative questions. The main reason is that x-questions are more beneficial to improve students’thinking ability and can provide an assessment of students’understanding of the texts. In terms of the content, the teachers ask text explicit questions the most frequently, followed by beyond-the-text questions and text implicit questions. The main reason is that in the limited class time, text explicit questions are more effective to help students grasp the key points and have a better understanding of the structure and content of the texts.Secondly, in senior high school English reading classes, the questioning types have impacts on the amount of students’oral English output and the differences between the questioning types are significant (Sig.=.000). X-questions and text explicit questions are more likely to facilitate students to produce more oral English output, which is mainly related to the form of x-questions and the sources of the answers to text explicit questions.Thirdly, in senior high school English reading classes, the questioning types have impacts on the syntactic complexity of students’oral English output and the differences between the questioning types are also significant (Sig.=.035). As a whole, students mostly use words or phrases to answer the questions. But comparatively speaking, students’responses to nexus questions, alternative questions and text implicit questions are more likely to take the form of words and phrases while those to x-questions and text explicit questions are more likely to be in the form of simple, compound, complex or compound-complex sentences, which is mainly related to the form of questions, students’English competence and their psychological factors.Based on the above findings, the following pedagogical implications are suggested. Firstly, senior high school English teachers should be aware of different questioning types and effectively design questions for their classroom teaching. In addition to x-questions and text explicit questions, teachers are also supposed to attach importance to text implicit and bcyond-the-text questions which prompt students to analyze and solve problems by themselves in English reading classes. Secondly, in senior high school English reading classes, students benefit greatly from x-questions and text explicit questions in terms of the amount and the syntactic complexity of oral output. However, English teachers should also pay attention to the impacts of other questioning types by taking into consideration such underlying factors as the students’English proficiency and their psychology.