The Effect Of Teachers' Questioning Behavior On Students' English Classroom Anxiety

Teachers' questioning behavior is one of important parts of classroom teaching.English teachers ask students questions in English class to help students understand and consolidate the knowledge and to help teachers check whether students master them or not.However,teachers' questioning behavior may cause language anxiety of English.Anxiety is a kind of negative mood which can restrain students learning process and also can lead to bad results of English study.Therefore,in order to explore the relationship between students' English classroom anxiety and external factors which are closely related to teachers' questioning behavior,the author selects four English teachers'classes conducting classroom observation and chooses 83 senior high school students in Wuhan Foreign Languages School as research participants.Based on the foreign language classroom anxiety scale(FLCAS),the author adapted it and designed a brand new questionnaire to explore the influence of types of questions,nomination techniques and wait time on students' English classroom anxiety.In addition,in order to explore other major factors which also have an influence on students'anxiety in English class,the author also applied a semi-structured interview to collect data.The research was guided by the following three questions:(1)What's the features of high school English teachers' questioning behavior?(2)What's the current situation of high school students' English classroom anxiety for teachers' questioning behavior?(3)Is high school students English classroom anxiety influenced by English teachers' types of questions,nomination techniques and the length of wait time?Are there any other major factors which affect high school students' anxiety in English class?In order to answer the first research question,the classroom observation is conducted to collect the information about the features of 8 English classes.In order to figure out the second and the third question,the researcher gave out 83 questionnaires which aims at measuring the influence of teachers' questioning behavior on students English classroom anxiety.However,only 78 participants finished questionnaires at the end of the research.Semi-structure interviews were also applied in the third question to find out more elements which may have a deep influence on students' English classroom anxiety.Based on the analysis of data collected from classroom observation,questionnaires and semi-structure interviews,findings show that:1.English teachers in Wuhan Foreign Languages School tend to ask displaying questions,closed questions and wh-questions.2.For most students,they are in mid and high level anxiety in English classroom.3.The anxiety of Wuhan Foreign Languages School students is much caused by referential questions,nomination techniques of voluntary answering and short wait time for answering referential questions,wh-questions and closed questions.In addition,the classroom atmosphere has a great impact on students' anxiety.The results of this research is great important for both English teachers and students in Wuhan Foreign Languages School.If research findings can be adopted in real classroom situations,students' anxiety can be alleviated through the change of teachers' questioning behavior and students' learning process of English will be much more relaxed than before.