Research On Cultivating Students’ Questioning Ability In Senior High School English Reading Teaching

For a long time,it is the teacher who acts as the main questioner in the English class and students’ questioning(SQ)has always been ignored.Reading class should be a two-way interaction between students and teachers.Students have the right to ask questions about what they read.Students’ questioning have great significance to both students’ English learning and teacher’s English teaching.For one thing,students asking questions in initiative can help them promote their learning interests and learning motivations,and help them better understand and construct what they are learning.For another thing,as a significant teaching feedback,students’ questioning can help teacher to realize students’ understanding and attitudes toward the contents presented by teacher and to analyze his or her teaching effects.However,the reality of the classroom situation is that students rarely have the opportunity to ask questions;even if the teacher gives them the opportunity,students are more likely to remain silent.Based on this,this study attempts to cultivate students’ questioning ability in reading teaching.Students’ questioning ability consists of questioning propensity and questioning behavior.Content,quantity,and quality are most important parts in questioning behavior.Hence this study aims to cultivate students’ questioning propensity and questioning behavior in reading teaching.Students of two classes in a senior high school in Guizhou Province were taken as the research participants in this study.Three research questions are mainly explored:(1)what is the impact of training SQ in reading teaching on students’ questioning propensity?(2)What is the impact of training SQ in reading teaching on students’ questioning behavior?(3)What is the impact of training SQ in reading teaching on students’ reading comprehension score?The whole research process is divided into three parts.To start with,the students’ questioning propensity,students’ questioning behavior(the quantity and quality of questions asked by students),and their reading comprehension score were investigated through questionnaires and tests before the experiment.Then,one class was randomly selected as the experimental class for nearly a semester of SQ ability training in reading;and students’ questioning behavior in class were observed;the other class was the control class in which the teacher continued to teach reading in usual way,without any training on students’ questioning.Finally,after the experiment,questionnaires,tests,and interview were used to test students’ questioning propensity,questioning behavior,and their reading comprehension score.The data collected through the whole study were analyzed by SPSS 25.0.The findings are as follows: Firstly,training students’ questioning in reading teaching can effectively improve students’ questioning propensity.Students improved themselves in cognitive,emotional,and behavioral aspects respectively at different levels.Secondly,after the explicit SQ ability training,students improved themselves in questioning behavior.The number of questions raised by students increased significantly,from an average of 3 questions per student before teaching experiment to an average of 7 questions after the experiment.At the same time,the quality of the questions raised by students has also improved;especially,convergent thinking questions have been improved obviously,divergent thinking questions have been improved a lot,but the improvement of evaluative questions is not obvious.Thirdly,training students’ questioning in reading teaching can help students to promote their reading comprehension score effectively.Finally,this study puts forward some suggestions for the cultivation of students’ questioning ability in English reading teaching,and makes prospects for future research based on this study.