An Empirical Study On Effective Questioning In Aural-oral English Classes In Junior High Schools

Questioning is an important skill for teachers.Teachers’ questioning can be considered as the most powerful means of guiding,extending,and controlling classroom communication.The effectiveness of questioning will greatly influence the development of students’ language knowledge and communicative competence.Effective questions can inspire students to think,to learn and to communicate.The compulsory education period is the latest sensitive period for Chinese students to learn English and a critical stage for developing listening and speaking skills.Therefore,it is crucial for English teachers to improve Chinese students’ listening and speaking skills.In the absence of a language environment,teachers’ classroom questions are the main means of English input for students,which make high demands on the effectiveness of teachers’ questions.Therefore,based on Long’s Interaction Hypothesis and Communicative Language Teaching Method(CLT),this study focuses on three aspects of urban and rural teachers’ questioning: pre-class preparation,in-class implementation and post-class reflection.Here are three main research questions: First,what are the differences between urban and rural English teachers in the pre-class preparation for effective classroom questioning? Second,what are the differences between urban and rural English teachers in the implementation of effective classroom questioning? Third,what are the differences between urban and rural English teachers in terms of post-class reflections on effective classroom questioning?10 junior high school English teachers and 512 students were invited from two schools of Fuyang(one from an urban school and the other from the rural one).As for methodology,three methods are used,classroom observation method,questionnaire survey and interview method,and the study focuses on the classroom questions from the 10 English teachers of their aural-oral classes.The study found that there were indeed many differences in teachers’ classroom questions in urban and rural middle school English aural-oral classes.(1)In terms of pre-class questions,urban teachers are more fully prepared than rural teachers.(2)In terms of while-class implementation,rural teachers were not as good as urban teachers in distributing the types and levels of questions,especially for display and high-level questions,urban teachers asked more questions;urban teachers did a better job in answering questions,while rural teachers asked and answered themselves more often;rural teachers were not as good as urban teachers in the use of strategies to promote and discuss;urban teachers’ feedback was more specific than rural teachers’ feedback.(3)In terms of post-class reflection,urban teachers reflected more frequently,with richer content and more diverse forms.The improvement measures of this study are mainly: to strengthen teachers’ awareness of pre-class questions design;to optimize question types and levels of questions during the classes;to stimulate voluntary responses from students and increase the effective feedback;to perform the combination of questioning techniques and improve the post-class reflection.Apart from those,it is also quite necessary for the teachers to make reasonable use of the content of teaching materials,increase the number of effective questions,and further improve the classroom questioning sessions.On the one hand,it aims to help urban and rural teachers improve the effectiveness of questioning and improve students’ classroom participation;on the other hand,it aims to promote the professional development of urban and rural teachers,so as to facilitate the realization of effective teaching.