A Study Of The Effect Of English Teacher Questioning Upon Students’ Answer Quality In Junior Middle School

Teacher questioning, as an important part of teacher talk, is an effective way which is one of the most widely used methods in classroom teaching. It not only plays an essential role in classroom teaching, but also has great influences on students’ answer quality. The aim of this research is to study the current situation of teacher questioning in junior middle school English classes, and to find out the influence of teacher questioning upon students’ answer quality.Teacher questioning is not only a main source of students’ input, but also provides opportunities for students to speak and communicate, which to some extent influences students’ answers. In the course of language learning, the answers to questions are affected by many factors and teacher questioning is just one of them. Teachers and students communicate with each other through teacher questioning, which is important for the interaction between teachers and students in English classes. Besides, with the requirements of national curriculum reform, English teachers should pay attention to students’practical use of language based on students’ learning interest so that it can change the original situation that teachers put too much emphasis on grammar and vocabulary drilling.This study focuses on the effect of teacher questioning upon students’answer quality, using the methods of classroom observation, questionnaire and interview. Based on Krashen’s comprehensible input theory, Long’s interaction theory and Swain’s output theory, there are 136 students and 15 teachers in this research in total.30 listening and speaking classes of 5 teachers of the 15 are video recorded to describe teacher questioning specifically from three aspects:question types, questioning wait-time, and teacher feedback. Through these three aspects, the author attempts to find the effect of teacher questioning on students’ answer quality.Based on this research, the findings are as follows:firstly, the types of questions from teachers have a co-relation with students’ answers in class. There are two kinds of questions raised by teachers in English class, namely, display questions and referential questions, and teachers ask more display questions than referential questions in junior middle school. Students prefer to give words or phrases to display questions while they give simple sentences and compound sentences to referential questions with higher quality. Secondly, the quality of students’ answers in class has a direct relation with wait-time given by the teachers. Because of different types of questions, teachers give students different length of wait-time to answer the questions. The average wait-time of display questions is about 3 seconds and the average wait-time of referential questions is about 20 seconds. Students give words or phrases when the wait-time is short, and they give simple sentences and compound sentences under the condition that the wait-time is long enough for them to think of the question. Therefore, the length of wait-time directly influences students’ answers in class. Thirdly, in junior middle school English classes, teachers tend to give more positive feedback than negative feedback. The effect of feedback on students’ answer quality does not directly show in classroom observation, but students’ questionnaire indicates that it is helpful for them to build up their confidence when thev are eiven positive feedback rather than negative feedback.