A Study Of Teachers’ Questioning Strategies In Cultivating Students’ Critical Thinking Skills In English Reading Instruction In Senior High School

Critical thinking is one of the most important skills in education,which is also a significant part and form of thinking quality in English.As an important part of English instruction in senior high school,reading instruction is one of the effective ways to cultivate critical thinking skills.Teachers’ questioning is not only a bridge for communication between teachers and students,but also a crucial way to cultivate students’ critical thinking skills.Therefore,how to cultivate and improve students’critical thinking skills through efficient questioning is a significant problem.At present,research on teachers’ questioning in cultivating critical thinking skills in English instruction is limited.Therefore,based on Paul’s Critical Thinking Framework and Interactive Hypothesis Theory,this study adopts classroom observation,questionnaire survey,teacher interview,and discourse analysis.By observing twenty-five reading classes from five English teachers from G senior high school in Beijing,analyzing 240 questionnaires and classroom discourse analysis,the paper studies specific teachers’ questioning strategies in cultivating critical thinking skills in English reading instruction.Main research questions are as follows:1.What is the teachers’ current understanding of questioning and critical thinking cultivation in G senior high school?2.In English reading instruction,what are the general status and specific situation of teachers’ questioning strategies in cultivating critical thinking skills?3.In English reading instruction,what are the influencing factors hindering cultivating critical thinking skills in teachers’ questioning?4.What are the main causes of these influencing factors?Are there any improvements and suggestions?The research findings are summarized as follows:1)Although teachers are aware of the importance of cultivating critical thinking,their understanding of critical thinking is not systematic.2)Teachers have different emphasis on critical thinking skills and cognitive depositions.Cultivating critical thinking sub-skills is unbalanced,which mainly focuses on analysis and inference skill,students’evaluation and self-regulation skill have been neglected.In terms of cognitive depositions,teachers’ questioning mainly concentrates on pursuit of truth and the openness,but needs to be improved in systematic analysis,curiosity and self-confidence.3)As for teachers’ questioning strategies in cultivating critical thinking skills:pumping is the most common questioning method;Literal comprehension questions are the most common questioning contents.Most teachers tend to adopt supportive feedback and seldom adopt non-supportive teacher feedback.4)There are five influencing factors hindering cultivating critical thinking skills:students’language proficiency,teachers’professional ability,curriculum design and school assessment,social environment,etc.Based on the above research results,this paper puts forward some suggestions on reading instruction and teachers’ questioning from the aspects of teachers’ self-improvement,teaching material analysis,teaching design,teaching evaluation and specific questioning strategies.