OnImprovingtheEffectivenessofEnglishClassroomQuestioninginSeniorHighSchool

1、on improving the effectiveness of english classroom questioning in senior high schoolcontentabstract1key words11 introduction of classroom questioning21.1 background21.2 significance31.3 organization32 literature review of classroom questioning42.1 theoretical basis42.2 research abroad72.3 research

2、at home93 teachers questioning problems in senior high school103.1 more display questions than referential questions103.2 improper control of wait-time113.3 inappropriate distribution of questions113.4 lack of feedback123.5 insufficient preparation124 main factors causing questioning problems134.1 l

3、earning environment134.2 cultural influence134.3 teachers factor144.4 students factor155 strategies of improving the classroom questionings effectiveness155.1 what155.2 when165.3 who175.4 how176 conclusion19bibliography20abstractclassroom questioning is an important part of classroom teaching, as we

4、ll as a major method to reach teaching target. currently, new english curriculum standard has set high demand for classroom questioning, but there are many serious problems related to classroom questioning, which we cant ignored any more. based on a lot of relative materials in this area and the obs

5、ervation of english classroom teaching in senior high school, this thesis from five aspects lists the main problems of classroom questioning in senior high school, finding out four factors leading to these problems and bringing up some strategies to improve the effectiveness of classroom questioning

6、 in the end.key words: classroom questioning, effectiveness, senior high schoolon improving the effectiveness of english classroom questioning in senior high school 1 introduction of classroom questioning1.1 backgroundin classroom, classroom questioning is an effective method and an essential compon

7、ent in classroom teaching, as well as a useful way both for teachers and students. as it shown, classroom questioning is more used in english subject rather than any other one, either in terms of person-time or questioning-frequency. moreover, studies relating to esl (english as second language) tea

8、ching have also pointed out the necessity for teachers questioning. in second english classrooms, where learners often do not have a great number of tools, teachers questions provide necessary stepping stone to communicate. therefore, it is of profound significance to improve the effectiveness of cl

9、assroom questioning, and to cultivate the students linguistic ability of comprehensive application. however, with the continuous reform on english teaching as well as the special demand of english subject itself, new problems and challenges for classroom questioning are arising. thus, it is importan

10、t to deal with questioning of teaching practice constantly, scientifically and tactfully.1.2 significance1.2.1 academic valuein recent years, more and more experts pay close attention to classroom questioning, but most of them are discussing the types of classroom questions, the principles and strat

11、egies to improve the efficiency of it in theory. while under the reform on english teaching, the research on the new demands for senior high school classroom questioning is rare. on the other hand, many distinguished high school teachers give many detail methods and strategies according to their own

12、 teaching experience, but these methods and strategies lack important theoretical basis. besides, many research methods traditionally through questionnaire and interview are full of limitation. only observing the classroom teaching, can it get closer to the actuality of classroom questioning and fin

13、d out problems, then analyze and summarize to get corresponding strategies. 1.2.2 pragmatic valuethe greatness of questioning in english subject is more predominant than any other subject. however, because of lacking enough research and professional cultivation, teachers cant take an appropriate met

14、hod to ask questions. we can often see a teacher asks question for question sake or ceremonially forces to ask questions, which will dampen students vigor and initiative and thus affect the quality of class teaching. therefore, its the demand of practice to improve and enhance the effectiveness of t

15、eachers classroom questioning. 1.3 organizationthe study comprises six chapters. chapter one introduces background and significance of the study. chapter two is literature review, including theoretical basis, such as, krashens input hypothesis, swans output hypothesis and longs interaction hypothesi

16、s and the relevant research both at home and abroad. chapter three lists the problems that exist in the classroom questioning of senior high school. chapter four explores the factors that lead to the related problems. chapter five illustrates the strategies to improve the efficiency of classroom que

17、stioning. chapter six makes a conclusion and the limitation of the study.2 literature review of classroom questioning2.1 theoretical basisclassroom questioning is an important part of classroom teaching and the main approach for teachers to interact with students. the interaction between teachers an

18、d learners in classroom goes on through learners receiving input mainly from teachers and producing output by themselves, which is hypothesized to aid language learning. and this is consistent with the input hypothesis, output hypothesis and interaction hypothesis. 2.1.1 krashens input hypothesisell

19、is claimed, “input is the language that is addressed to the l2（second language）learner either by a native speaker or by another l2 learner.” in the late 20th century, krashen (1985) puts forward what he calls the input hypothesis. he indicates that development from a learners current stage level of

20、competence, i, to the next stage, i+1, which is a little bit beyond his or her current level of competence, is achieved through the learner comprehending language. the gap between the learners i and i+1 is bridged by information drawn from the situation and from the learners previous experience. kra

21、shen believes comprehension is necessary in order for the input to became intake. he stresses that the learners focus of attention during this process is not on the new forms themselves, but on the message being communicated. it maintains that a second language is acquired through processing compreh

22、ensible input, i.e language that is heard or read and understood. besides, krashen also states that the best language input has four basic conditions. first, language input should be of large amount. second, language input should be comprehensible. the purpose is to ensure the learning interest of s

23、econd language learner. third, language input should be interesting and closely related to the learners life and study. fourth, the language input should not emphasize too much on grammar. 2.1.2 swans output hypothesison the basis of long years of research with french immersion programs in canada, s

24、wain (1985) has put forward output hypothesis that emphasizes the opportunities to “push” the students to produce language. the output hypothesis has claimed that “comprehensible input is an important factor in language acquisition, but not a sufficient one; learners need the opportunity for meaning

25、ful use of their linguistic resources to achieve full grammatical competence in the target language” (swain, 1985).swain defines three functions of output: 1. noticing function: learners encounter gaps between what they want to say and what they are able to say and so they notice what they do not kn

26、ow or only know partially in this language. 2. hypothesis-testing function: when learners say something there is always a hypothesis underlying e.g. about grammar. by uttering something the learners test this hypothesis and receive feedback from an interlocutor. this feedback enables them, if necess

27、ary, to reprocess their hypothesis. 3. metalinguistic function: learners reflect about the language they learn and hereby the output enables them to control and internalize linguistic knowledge. in classroom environment during the interaction of questioning-answering process, students receive input

28、and produce output. according to the output hypothesis, more opportunities to utter the target language should be created and provided by teachers to learners, aiding them to utilize the interactional negotiation, for the purpose of promoting their interlanguage development.2.1.3 longs interaction h

29、ypothesis “interaction is the collaborative exchange of thoughts, feelings, or ideas between two or more people resulting in a reciprocal effect on each other”(brown, 1994:159). scholars has argued a lot about the importance of interaction in l2 classroom, such as allwright(1984) and long(1983) etc.

30、 and long thought that not only linguistic modifications but some of the modifications of speech help or even are of more importance for comprehension. he launched a series of studies that illustrated the relationship between interaction and learners linguistic needs, which is the base of interactio

31、n hypothesis. the interaction hypothesis proposed by long is considered to be complementary to the comprehensible input hypothesis, which is challenged by some researchers for its negligence of the importance of output and/or interaction. the interaction hypothesis admits the importance of comprehen

32、sible input and emphasizes the function of meaning negotiation to language acquisition. it is claimed that it is a most effective way to maximize the students acquisition when the comprehensible input is modified through the negotiation of meaning (conversational adjustment) or interactional modific

33、ation. long believes that “two-way communication” has more advantage in improving sla (second language acquisition) than “one-way communication”. because during “two-way communication”, meaning negotiation and interactional modification between speakers can be used to construct the common understand

34、ing on the ongoing discourse, aiding to improve the compensability of input (nunan, 1999). allwright(1984) also claimed that the comprehensible input has to be combined with interaction in order to improve language acquisition. when communication breakdowns happen, efforts are often made by interloc

35、utors to modify foregoing utterances by means of a variety of strategies so as to improve comprehensibility. these strategies are commonly referred to conversational modification devices or interactional modification devices. long describes fifteen devices for the modification of interaction. among

36、these, the commonly used devices are comprehension checks, confirmation checks and clarification requests. and these devices are used statistically significantly more often in native speakernon-native speaker conversations than the native speakernative speaker conversations (long, 1983). according t

37、o ellis, confirmation checks and clarification requests are often used in the natural environment to conquer the difficulties occurred in the communicative process. since “language use can be regarded as essentially a matter of the negotiation of meaning” (widdowson, 1999:104-105), language use in l

38、2 classroom then can be viewed as the interactional negotiation between teachers and learners. and both sides should be aware of the importance of employing these devices in the classroom interaction, on one hand, to make the teachers utterance as input more comprehensible, and on the other hand imp

39、rove the understandable output of the learners.2.2 research abroad2.2.1 questions typesmany researches on questioning is involved with developing taxonomies to describe types. in general, there are two popular ways of classifying questions.2.2.1.1 open & closed questionsbarnes (1969) categorized

40、 questions into open and closed questions. an open question refers to a question with no definite answers from the responder. the responder can provide any answer that seems appropriate. a closed question, in contrast, is likely to be regarded as clearly right or wrong and often teachers will persis

41、t in their questioning until they obtain the response they are seeking. for example, “how many seasons in a year?” is a closed question, while “whats you favorite season?” is an open question.2.2.1.2 display & referential questionlong and sato (1983) divided questions into display questions and

42、referential questions. display questions refer to those to the questioner has the answer in mind. in other words, display questions are used to test the leaner by eliciting already known information. referential questions, on the other hand, are those questions to which the questioner does not have

43、a definite answer in mind. these questions are used to seek information from the responder. for example, a teacher has a pen in her hand, she asks her students “whats this? is this a pen?” this question is a display question. then she continues, “what do you think of the pen?” this is a referential

44、question.2.2.2 questioning strategiesstrategies are concrete and practical actions that people perform to accomplish a certain task. and questioning strategies refer to practical actions used in teacher questioning. teachers adopt questioning strategies to enable classroom questioning effective.ques

45、tioning strategies are of great importance in l2 class. with questioning strategies, teachers pose questions skillfully or artfully so as to fulfill some teaching aims effectively and successfully.the classification of questioning strategy is various. for example, hu (2004) classified questioning st

46、rategies into six, and they are probing, chaining, repetition, simplification, rephrasing and decomposition.2.2.3 wait timeellis (1999:589) defined wait-time as the length of time the teacher is prepared to wait for an answer. and some other scholars claimed that “wait-time” referred to the length o

47、f time elapsing between the initiation of teachers question and the respond of students and between the student answers and the following teacher speech act (rowe, 1986).rowe(1986)found that teachers wait only approximately one second after asking a question before calling on a student and one secon

48、d after a student responds before the teachers intervened by probing the responses, rephrasing the question, redirecting to another student, or providing the answer. nunan(1991)summarizes the effects of increasing wait time observed in studies. for example, when wait-time is increased, the student r

49、esponses will be lengthened; there will be more volunteers to respond to the question and the answer will be more appropriate and more speculative; the failures to answer questions will decrease.2.2.4 teacher feedbackfeedback, according to brown(1988), means“allowing learners to experience the effec

50、t of what they produce as a guide in their future efforts”. brown believes that feedback must be more than encouragement, for “empty and automatic encouragement is pointless”.feedback plays an important role during teaching. feedback may not only to let learners know how well they have performed but

51、 also to increase the learners motivation and make the classroom climate more supportive. long (1983) indicates that the feedback that instructors give to learners in the classroom makes a significant influence on the speed and success with learners development of interlanguage.feedback can be group

52、ed into different items, such as, affective and cognitive feedback; content and form feedback. while the most frequently used category is the classification of positive feedback and negative feedback. 2.3 research at homein china, the history of questioning research can date back to confucius the ed

53、ucator during the spring & autumn period and the warring states. in the analects of confucius, he pointed out that the tutor should not to enlighten the student, until he has turn the problem over in his mind and arrive a level of obtaining some thoughts but can not speak out the standard answer

54、, the phrase means in teaching process the teacher ought to get the right point to conduct the student, neither too fast nor too slow.most of the questioning studies in china are theories based dealing with question types, questioning strategies and skills. classroom questioning theories have been i

55、ntroduced by some scholars, such as jin chuanbao(1997)，wang yinquan(2000)and wang duqin(2002).zhou xing & zhou yun(2002) researched the characteristics of question types and feedback of four english teachers and their students concluding that more referential questions were posed than display qu

56、estions and there were more positive feedback employed. xu feng(2003)focused on question types and wait-time of six english teachers from a university in northwest china and their students concluding that the more questions are posed the more referential questions posed; the wait-time was insufficie

57、nt; 30%students posed grammatical, lexical and phonetic questions.in the art of classroom questioning, liu xianguo compare classroom questioning as a teaching art. he mainly works on the classroom questioning in chinese and math in primary school. he makes a summary of the function of classroom ques

58、tioning. they are as follows, to arouse students interest; to promote the development of students thinking; to control the teaching process; to arouse the unconscious attention; to conduct students thinking; etc. he also puts forward “five priorities”: first questioning then roll-call; first discuss

59、ion then conclusion-make; first students then teachers; first encouraging then error-correct. 3 teachers questioning problems in senior high school3.1 more display questions than referential questionsaccording to long and sato, they categorized questions into display and referential questions. from the observance of english