to promote classroom interaction, enliven classroomatmosphere and improve classroom teaching efficiency. This chapter aims to explore thedomestic and foreign scholars’ related research on classroom questioning and theoreticalbasis. First of all, related concepts about classroom questioning will be summarized briefly.Although there are a variety of definitions of classroom questioning at home and abroad, itis believed that classroom questioning has a very important influence on the learning of thelearners. Secondly, it discusses the related studies on classroom questioning at home andabroad. Finally, the theoretical basis is discussed, including input hypothesis andinteraction theory.
2.1 Definitions of Related Concepts
For the definitions of the questioning, the studies on all levels at all times and in allcountries are different. From Confucius’s heuristic teaching to Socrates’s “midwifery”,these theories profoundly reveal that the role of questioning in English class and itsextensive use. Chinese and foreign scholars have made a lot of discussion on the classroomquestioning.In China, scholars believe that classroom questioning is the stimulation of teachingcontent as well as the instruction for student’s activity content and activity mode, which isan effective way to promote students’ thinking and development. Modern ChineseDictionary’s explanation of the question is to put sb. a question, especially the teachers tothe students. Classroom questioning is that in the classroom teaching, the teacher asksquestions about the teaching and makes the students to answer the questions. In a broadsense, any form of speech that is used to present and trigger another person’s mentalactivity and to respond to a speech is a question. This definition limits the subject andobject of the question to the teachers and students, and only teachers have the right to askquestions. Fu Daochun (1997) further pointed out that the main reason for the teacher tocause the student to answer the questions in class is “language stimulation”. Of course, thelanguage is not the only stimulation, and there are other stimulations, such as gestures,facial expressions, etc. Language is not only a question sentence, but also any statementthat elicits a linguistic response.
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2.2 Research Status of Teacher’s Classroom Questioning
In this section, the author reviews previous studies of classroom questioning abroadand at home from the following perspectives: classifications of questions, questioningstrategies, wait-time and feedback.There is a long history of research on teacher questioning abroad, and the earliestresearch on teacher questioning can be traced back to Socrates. Socrates pointed out the“midwife” theory, which points out that the knowledge is not taught directly to students butknowledge is the process by which a series of dialogues, such as questioning and arguing,are used to help students explore what is the correct knowledge.As early as 1912, Stevens, an American psychologist, did a systematic research onteacher questioning. He found that the teacher’s questions in class and the students’answers accounted for about 80% of the class time. The teacher asks 2 or 4 questions perminute and the questioning is the core of effective teaching.The research of western teachers’ classroom questioning system has not beeninterrupted since 1960s. Since 1970s, teacher questioning has become an independent fieldin the study of second language acquisition. More and more researchers begin to explorethe teacher classroom questioning from different angles, such as the classification,strategies, waiting time and teacher’s feedback and so on.
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Chapter 3 Research Design and Data Analysis.....17
3.1 Research Questions......17
3.2 Research Participants
