A Research On Junior High School Students’ Silence And Teachers’ Questioning Strategies In English Classes

Teacher-student interaction has become a major concern for many years.In the English classroom,teachers’ questioning is an important link in the interaction between students and teachers.Currently,many Chinese students are very silent in the English classroom,which seriously affects the interaction between teachers and students.Numerous studies have shown that one of the reasons for students’ silence is the teacher’s questioning.Therefore,how to reduce classroom silence through effective questioning is one of the issues that need to be explored urgently.Based on Socio-constructivism,the Interaction Hypothesis,and the Dialogue Theory,this paper is designed to explore the following questions:（1）What is the current status of students’ silence in junior English classrooms?（2）What are the reasons for students’ silence in junior high school English classrooms?（3）How does teachers’ questioning affect students’ silence in English classrooms in junior high school?To address these issues,classroom observation,a questionnaire survey,and interviews were conducted in this study.110 junior high school students from Luochuan County,Yan’an province,took part in this research.Classroom observation and interviews were meant to investigate into the current situation of students’ silence and teachers’ questioning strategies.The questionnaire is conducted to examine the main reasons for students’ silence and teachers’ questioning methods that affect students’ silence.According to the research finding,some effective strategies for teachers’ questioning to reduce classroom silence are proposed.The results of this study are as follows: First of all,classroom silence did exist in junior high English classes and it was very serious.Second,many factors led to students’ silence.Among them,teachers’ methods of questioning account for 38.37% of classroom silence.Third,the difficulties and types of questions,waiting time,teachers’ feedback and the ways questions were answered had a strong correlation with students’ silence.Based on the results from the questionnaire,interviews,and classroom observation,the author proposes some strategies that could reduce classroom silence.Firstly,teachers should design more referential questions and consider the cognitive level of the students when asking questions.Secondly,teachers should give chances to more students rather than preferring some targeted students.Thirdly,teachers should increase the waiting time to ensure students have sufficient time to prepare for answering questions.Lastly,more and diverse positive feedback should be employed to encourage students to express themselves.The findings of this thesis will not only enable teachers to fully understand the current situation of students’ silence and teachers’ questioning,but also help to enrich the research on students’ silence and teachers’ questioning in junior high school English classrooms.This has important implications for teachers’ understanding of their own shortcomings in questioning and can help teachers improve their questioning strategies and reduce students’ silence,thus facilitating the development of both teachers and students.