Research On The Cultivation Of Students' Thinking Qualities Through Questioning

In New English Curriculum Standards 2017,the key competencies of English subject are put forward,and thinking qualities is explicitly included for the first time.Our goal is to cultivate students' thinking qualities,especially for them to be able to distinguish specific phenomena in language and culture,to sort out general information,to construct new concepts,to analyze the logical relationship of inferred information,to correctly criticize various thinking points of view,to express their views creatively,and to have the ability to think and innovate in the use of English.There are many ways for teachers to cultivate students' thinking qualities.Among them,questioning is a significant tool for teachers.From the aspect of cultivating students' thinking qualities,this study is to analyze the questions of English reading articles' teaching videos which were recorded in Tianjin Number 25 Middle School.After consulting the main literature at home and abroad,the author adopts three instruments,recording,interview and case study to answer the following two questions: 1.What is the current situation of questioning in English reading lesson in the aspect of cultivating students' thinking qualities? 2.How do teachers design questions to cultivate students' thinking qualities?The author collected more than ten reading teaching videos of four English teachers in Grade One of a senior high school.The videos include the teaching of ten reading articles.After transcribing,according to the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives,the author analyzed questioning frommacro and micro aspects as well as used case study to analyze it deeply.At the same time,in order to further understand how do teachers design questions to cultivate students' thinking qualities,the author conducted a face-to-face audio interview with four teachers.The results show that: 1.From the macro analysis of questioning,most of the questions cultivate the flexibility and agility of students' thinking qualities,and several questions cultivate the criticalness,complexity and creativity of students' thinking qualities.Teachers are conscious of cultivating students thinking qualities through questioning.2.From the micro analysis of questioning,although teachers have designed different kinds of questions,the questions are not of sufficient quality.Especially the high order thinking questions did not encourage higher thinking processes.3.During interview,four teachers put forward six methods for cultivating students' thinking qualities through questioning: designing questions based on Revised Bloom's Taxonomy;designing questions based on students' cognitive development;designing questions considering social values and students' emotion;designing questions based on deeply text interpretation;designing questions focusing on the main ideas of the text and designing questions by using textbooks.