An Empirical Study Of Effects Of English Teachers’ Questioning In Group Discussion On Students’ Critical Thinking In Senior High Schools

With the proposal of key competencies of English,many English teachers’ attention has been drawn to the cultivation of students’ critical thinking.Reading teaching plays an important role in the development of students’ critical thinking.In reading lessons,many teaching strategies are employed to promote students’ critical thinking,among which group discussion and teachers’ questioning are most frequently used.Recently,a number of studies have ascertained the positive effects of two teaching strategies respectively on students’ critical thinking.However,few research examines the impact of their combination（teachers’ questioning in group discussion）upon critical thinking.Therefore,the present study focuses on teachers’ questioning in group discussion,applying quantitative and qualitative analysis to explore the relationships between teachers’ questioning in group discussion and senior high school students’ critical thinking.The research questions are as below:（1）Which teachers’ questioning in group discussion has the greater influence on senior high school students’ critical thinking,higher-order questioning or lower-order questioning ?（2）How can teachers’ questioning in group discussion（higher-order questioning or lower-order questioning）influence senior high school students’ critical thinking?To solve the aforementioned questions,a study,lasting for one semester,was carried out with twelve participants（a total of four groups of students）from a senior high school in Baiyun District,Guangzhou.After two-round group selections and pilot study,the subjects participated in two formal tests.Through analyzing the transcriptions that participants discussed higher-order questioning and lower-order questioning within limited time in two formal tests,the author applied “scoring standard” to grade their performance and used SPSS 23.0 to statistically analyze dimensional scores and total scores of students’ critical thinking in each formal test,together with the results of interview data adopted as triangulation.The findings of the study indicate:（1）In group discussion,higher-order questioning has the greater impact on students’ critical thinking than lower-order questioning.（2）Higher-order questioning influences students’ critical thinking through motivating them to put forward various and novel viewpoints,attaching importance to questioning itself,and demonstrating viewpoints with detailed evidence.However its effect on content comprehensiveness is limited.Lower-order questioning plays less important part in facilitating students’ critical thinking,especially in multi-dimensional viewpoint,detail argument,content flexibility and content comprehensiveness.This thesis ends up with the conclusion that higher-order questioning is better than lower-order questioning for English teachers to organize students to have group discussion in reading lessons with the purpose of enhancing students’ critical thinking in senior high schools.It is suggested that English teachers address high-quality higher-order questions through interpreting reading materials in depth when developing students’ critical thinking in reading lessons.Besides,harmonious groups need to be built up when students are asked to discuss the questions in groups.