A Study On The Modes Of Teacher Questions In Senior High English Reading Classes

Teacher questioning working as an important skill in teaching,reasonable question design can develop students' thinking abilities.As the new English Curriculum for Senior High School prescribes,reading is an irreplaceable skill.Meanwhile,it also emphasizes on cultivating students' thinking abilities.However,research attention in recent years seems to have been laid on the analysis of teacher questions in college classrooms;while less research has investigated into teacher questions in English classrooms in senior high school.In terms of the research questions,the existing studies have investigated the types,functions and questioning strategies,but little research has attempted to relate the study of teacher questions with the students' cognitive development based on the Bloom's cognitive taxonomy.Thus,it is of theoretical and practical significance to conduct research of such type.In this study,the research instruments of classroom observation,interview,and questionnaire were applied to investigate the question modes of six teachers from two different high schools(Neijiang NO.1 and NO.6 high schools)in their English reading classes based on the Bloom's cognitive taxonomy.The results indicated that the teacher participants preferred to raise questions of lower cognitive level;while questions of higher cognitive level were lack in number.The following reasons might explain this situation: Firstly,English teaching in senior school tends to focus on students' rotelearning.Secondly,the question design of the participants might not be systematic and mature.Meanwhile,the participants' questions at the pre-,while-and post-reading stages tended to follow certain modes: At the pre-reading stage,one mode is to use questions of high-cognitive level(e.g.productive and evaluative questions)to arouse students' interest and/or guide them to have an overall understanding of the reading topic.The other one is to use questions of lower-cognitive level(e.g.factual questions)to open the topic from the details of reading text directly.At While-reading stage,there are also two modes.For the teacher participants who adopted Bottom-up reading teaching method,the question types tended to move from those of lower-cognitive to higher-cognitive level.On the contrary,for the teacher participants who adopted Top-down reading teaching method,the question types tended to move from those of higher-cognitive to lower-cognitive level.At the post-reading stage,all the participants tended to apply questions of higher-cognitive level to arouse the students' thinking.But on the whole,the questioning mode is not mature and systematic enough to guide the students' thinking.The reasons may be: Firstly,high school teachers might lack of the awareness of applying theories into the design of questions;Secondly,high school teachers might not be skilled at guiding the students' thinking by using reasonable question design.It is suggested in this study that the Bloom's cognitive taxonomy provides a good framework to develop students' thinking abilities.In order to be skilled at guiding the students' thinking by using reasonable question design,it is useful for high school English teachers to be aware of and apply the Bloom's cognitive taxonomy into the question design,i.e.to raise questions from lower cognitive to higher cognitive level in order to cultivate students' thinking abilities.