A Comparative Study Of Senior High School English Teachers’ Classroom Questioning For Cultivation Of Students’ Thinking Qualities

National English Curriculum Standard explicitly points out high school English teaching should cultivate students’ key competencies.As one of the key competencies,thinking qualities contain three aspects: logical thinking,critical thinking,and creative thinking.Classroom questioning,a most vital way in English teaching,can help students expand the minds and cultivate thinking qualities.Based on the requirements of cultivation of thinking quality,this study explores classroom questioning in regular classes and demonstration classes.This paper adopts corpus-based method and interview to explore the following two questions:(1)What are the similarities and differences between classroom questioning of regular classes and classroom questioning of demonstration classes?(2)What are the factors that lead to the similarities and differences?The findings of this study are as follows:(1)About the similarities and differences between classroom questioning of regular classes and demonstration classes,compared with the classroom questioning in demonstration classes,the classroom questioning in regular classes prefers to use display questions and pays attention to testing students’ basic knowledge.The classroom questioning in demonstration classes tends to use referential questions and pays more attention to cultivate students’ high-level cognitive.Both classroom questioning in regular classes and classroom questioning in demonstration classes prefers to raise the questions,which can cultivate logical thinking.Classroom questioning in regular classes includes fewer questions,which can cultivate students’ critical thinking and creative thinking.Classroom questioning in demonstration classes can balance the proportion of different questions in different cognitive levels.Classroom questioning in regular classes tends to use the repeating and rephrasing.The classroom questioning in demonstration classes prefers to use the chaining and decomposition.Classroom questioning in regular classes and classroom questioning in demonstration classes both prefer to use probing.It can be seen that the questioning strategies in demonstration classes are efficient to cultivate students’ thinking qualities.(2)Based on the above situation,the following factors will lead to the similarities and differences: teachers’ understanding of classroom questioning,and teachers’ preparation for class.Therefore,teachers should improve the effectiveness of classroom questioning and promote the cultivation of students’ thinking quality.