An Empirical Study Of Effects Of Teacher Questioning On Students’ Critical Thinking In Senior High School English Reading Teaching

The New English Curriculum Standard for Senior High Schools(2017 edition)takes the cultivation and development of students’ core competence of English discipline as the specific goal of senior high school English curriculum,and emphasizes the importance of thinking quality which constitutes the core competence of English discipline.With the importance of thinking quality becoming more and more prominent,the cultivation of students’ critical thinking has also attracted much attention.Teacher questioning in English reading class affects the quality of reading teaching and plays a key role in cultivating and developing students’ critical thinking.In particular,teacher questioning with high cognitive level has a positive impact on students’ critical thinking.However,in the current senior high school English reading teaching in China,most teachers lack the attention to the cognitive level of questioning.As a result,most of teachers’ questions in reading teaching are mainly low-level cognition questions,whereas the number of high-level cognition questions is small.At the same time,the goal of English reading teaching pays too much attention to the acquisition of the basic knowledge of English,and teachers lack the awareness of using teacher questioning to stimulate students’ thinking,which is not conducive to the cultivation and development of students’ critical thinking.In view of this,this study classifies and designs teacher questioning according to Bloom’s taxonomy and applies the carefully designed teacher questioning to English reading teaching based on Constructivism theory and Zone of Proximal Development theory.Through teaching examples,this study designs teacher questioning and adopts empirical study method to explore the effects of teachers questioning on students’ critical thinking in senior high school English reading teaching,and to explore the effectiveness of cultivating students’ critical thinking of teacher questioning,in order to provide English teachers with reference for the design of teacher questioning as well as the training of students’ critical thinking.In this study,two parallel classes were selected as the experimental class and the control class for teaching experiment in the Grade Two of Senior High School in Y County,J City,Shandong Province.This study uses the Chinese version of California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory(CCTDI),California Critical Thinking Skills Test(CCTST),reading test paper,interview outline and SPSS19.0 as research instruments to study the following three questions:(1)What is the effect of teacher questioning on students’ critical thinking dispositions in high school English reading teaching?(2)What is the effect of teacher questioning on students’ critical thinking skills in high school English reading teaching?(3)What is the effect of teacher questioning on students’ English reading achievements in high school English reading teaching?The results of data analysis show that after four months of experimental teaching,the students’ overall critical thinking disposition and the sub dimensions of critical thinking disposition,the overall critical thinking skills and the sub dimensions of critical thinking skills have been significantly improved in the experimental class,compared with those before the experiment and those in the control class.Meanwhile,the English reading achievements of the students in the experimental class have been significantly improved compared with those before the experiment and those in the control class.Combining with the results of the interviews with students,it can be concluded that teachers questioning in reading teaching has a positive effect on students’ critical thinking disposition and critical thinking skills,and can effectively improve students’ English reading achievements.