| Reading teaching plays an important role in junior high school English teaching,and it makes a difference in cultivating students’ key competencies and comprehensive language application ability.As one of the principal ways for teachers to guide students to do reading,teacher questioning is not only an important part of classroom teaching,but also the most commonly used form of interaction between teachers and students.However,many teachers are not good at applying questioning strategies to arouse students’ learning interest.In their classroom,questioning becomes perfunctory and has lost its significance.Therefore,it is of great significance to investigate the application of teachers’ questioning strategies in junior high school English reading teaching for improving the quality of reading teaching.Given all that,research on teachers’ questioning strategies in English reading class was conducted in Xi’an Foreign Languages School.Through questionnaire surveys of 30 teachers and 191 students and combined with classroom observation and interview of 4 teachers,this research aims to find out the current status and the main factors that influence teachers’ application of questioning strategies in reading teaching.Furthermore,the research provides some suggestions for improving English teachers’ application of questioning strategies.Based on this purpose,this thesis focuses on the following three research questions:(1)What are the characteristics and major problems of teachers’ application of questioning strategies in junior high school English reading class?(2)What are the factors that influence junior high school English teachers’ application of questioning strategies in English reading class?(3)What are the influences of the questioning strategies used by teachers on students’ English learning?The results of this research indicate that the lack of strategic questions is prevalent in junior high school English reading teaching.The existing problems include the lack of planning,too simple design of content,the monotonous way of asking questions and too general feedback and so on.The main factors that affect the application of teacher questioning strategies are as follows: teachers’ different teaching style and educational background,students’ language level and response,the constraints of lessons duration as well as the guidance of the senior high school entrance examination.Furthermore,teachers’ lack of relevant theory about questioning strategies not only hinders the effective implement of teaching activities,but also brings negative effect on the improvement of students’ expression ability,the development of thinking ability and the cultivation of interests in English.Accordingly,in order to improve the teacher questioning in English reading class,this research raises some feasible suggestions for teachers.Firstly,teachers should update their educational ideas with the reformation of curriculum.Secondly,teachers could use different questioning strategies and adjust their questioning according to students’ responses effectively and properly.Thirdly,teachers need to rationally control the waiting-time and provide specific evaluation in order to stimulate students’ learning motivation. |
