中外教师EFL课堂提问研究

1、东北师范大学硕士学位论文中外教师efl课堂提问研究姓名：张玉梅申请学位级别：硕士专业：英语语言文学导教师：刘永兵20091201课堂提问一直以来都是英语课堂教学的一个重要手段。在当今盛行的“以学生为中 心”的主题教学模式中，课堂提问更是发挥着越来越大的作用。通过课堂提问，教师 不但可以通过提问使学生参与交流，还可以通过提问使学生调整自己的语言，使其更具 有可理解性(riehards&loekhart，1996:185)”。所以，对教师提问及提问行为的研究多 年来已成为语言教学研究所关注的焦点。但现今的调查研究对象仅仅局限于中国英语教 师，而忽略了另外一支高校外语教学的重要组成部分-英语外教。鉴

2、于此，本文将研究 对象锁定大学中外教师，调查和分析其课堂提问现状，旨在促进中外教师之间的教学交 流，为高校新进教师提供参考和借鉴。本文主要以克拉申的可理解输入理论，迈克郎的互动假说，斯万的输出假说为理论 框架，就课堂提问的5大重要方面，课堂提问的类型，课堂提问的变换技巧，课堂提问 的等待时间，课堂提问的教师反馈，课堂提问的问题分配等通过对某民办大学6位英语 专业的中外教师的课堂观察、23位中外教师及325名大二学生的调查问卷及抽样采访等 对课堂提问的状况进行调查与分析，以期通过对比，互通有无，提出建设性的建议，促 进外语教学的发展。调查结果显示，中外英语教师的课堂提问具有以下的特点：（1)中外

3、教师在课堂提 问时，展示性问题都多于参考性问题；但外籍教师参考性问题的提问数量是中国英语教 师的四倍之多；（2)中外教师都釆用各种变换提问的技巧，帮助学生修h错误，启发学 生思维，激发学生更多的参与课堂。但中国教师在各种变换技巧中，偏爱启发式；外籍 教师常用追问式；（3)中外教师对参考性问题的等待时间都多于展示性问题，但外籍教 师的等待时间要明显多于中国英语教师；（4)中外教师在课堂提问中，给予学生的积极 反馈都明显多于消极反馈；在学生给出错误答案时，都能够首先采用引导学生自我修正 的方式。（5)在提问问题的分配上，外籍教师在整个课堂过程中，都以按事先准备好的 “名片”洗牌后，顺次点名的方式要

4、求学生回答问题；中国教师在问题的分配上灵活性 较强，但也有一定的规律性；在复习时，以点名为主；在分析课文时，以全班回答为主， 自愿回答为辅。在以上文提及的框架理论，以及克拉申的情感过滤理论，perry ur的有效课堂提问 的标准的理论框架对调査结果进行讨论分析后，作者分别就5大方面的提问技巧，提出 了一定的建议，如：中国教师应转换思维，由强调过多的语言知识转为培养学生的交际 能力，促进学生的语言输出；在课堂提问时，中外教师应将情感过滤因素考虑进去，适 当调整等待时间，及反馈方式；外籍教师在兼顾公平的同时，应该了解学生的学习水平， 及性格特征，适当调整提问对象等等。本文对大学中外教师的课堂提问的

5、调査分析，是在前人研究的基础上，做为一个全 新的视角，以真实的数据分析，再现了现今大学英语课堂提问的现状。相信为大学教师itt了解课堂提问，思考自身的课堂提问技巧，以及为其他学者的后续研究能够提供一定的 参考资料。关键词：课堂提问；大学中外教师；调查与分析abstractteacher questioning has long been an important means in english classroom teaching. it comes to play a more and more significant role in the popuar student-centered

6、 and theme-based teaching mode. by teacher questioning, teachers can not only involve students into interaction, but also encourage students to modify his own language and make it comprehensible (riehards&loekhart，1996:185). for better questioning, many researchers have worked on teacher questioning

7、 and questioning behaviour. the present study focuses on questioning of both foreign teachers and chinese teachers, in an attempt to make an investigation of the current situation of teacher questioning in efl classroom, aims to promote the communication between foreign and chinese teachers in teach

8、ing experience and provide reference for those new college english teachers.taking krashens comprehensible input, michael longs interaction hypothesis and swains ouptput hypothesis as theory base, the present study makes an investigation of the current situation in five fundamental aspects, question

9、 types, question modification, wait-time, teachers feedback and question distribution, by means of class observation, questionnaire and interview, in an expectation to leam from each other and put forward some constructive suggestions to contribute to the development of second language teaching.the

10、result reveals the following features in teacher questioning:firstly, both foreign teachers and chinese teachers ask more display questions than referential questions; but foreign teachers ask four times more referential questions than chinese teachers.secondly, as far as question modification is co

11、ncerned, both chinese teachers and foreign teachers vary their strategies to aid students in repairing their errors, stimulating their thinking, motivating them to participate more into classroom activities. but among the strategies, chinese teachers use prompting most; foreign teachers employ probi

12、ng most.thirdly, both foreign and chinese teachers wait longer after asking referential questions than display questions. but obviously, foreign teachers wait longer than chinese teachers after these two question types.fourthly, both foreign and chinese teachers give students more postive feedback t

13、han negative feedback; and when students give a wrong answer, both of them prefer to guide student to self-repair first.fifthly, in question distribution, foreign teachers nominate students all the time with a pile of name cards; chinese teachers are more flexible. in the revision part, they nominat

14、e students; in text anylysis part, they ask students to respond in chorus mainly, with animplement by volunteer.after anylysis and discussion, refering to questioning strategies in these five aspects, some suggestions are proposed, such as, chinese teachers should make a shift from the emphasis of l

15、inguistic knowledge to communicative competence; both foreign and chinese teachers should take affective factors into consideration in questioning, trying to lower affective factors like nervousness, anxiety and inhibition in language learners by giving proper feedback and longer wait-time; foreign

16、teachers should leam more about students linguistic competence and personality type and adjust the object of questioning accordingly.based on previous researches, the present disseration makes an anylysis of the current situation of questioning. the difference lies in the subjects of the study are b

17、oth foreign and chinese teachers. it is belived that the true data collection and analysis will provide reference to the coming teachers and scholars.key words: teacher questioning; foreign and chinese teachers; current situation独创性声明本人郑重声明：所提交的学位论文是本人在导师指导下独立进行研究工作所 取得的成果。据我所知，除了特别加以标注和致谢的地方外，论文中不包

18、含其他 人已经发表或撰写过的研究成果。对本人的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均 已在文中作了明确的说明。本声明的法律结果由本人承担。指导教师签名： 日期:学位论文作者签名：表护 r期:“终,ij小学位论文作者毕业后去向：工作单位：棘并?11廷电话:通讯地址:学位论文作者签名：錄乂fi闩期:？和力卞学位论文使用授权书本学位论文作者完全了解东北师范大学有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，即： 东北师范大学有权保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交学位论文的复印件和电子 版，允许论文被査阅和借阅。本人授权东北师范大学可以将学位论文的全部或部 分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、缩印或其它复制手段保存、汇

19、编本学位论文。(保密的学位论文在解密后适用本授权书）chapter one introduction1.1 background of the studysince chinas entry into wto, china has more interaction with the rest of the world, economically, politically, culturally. english, as a language tool, is called for on different occasions. more and more talents with good c

20、ommand of english are summoned. however, it seems that the demand is far away from being satisfied. even though most chinese students have learned english more than ten years when they graduate from college, they still remain deficient in the ability to actually use the language and understand its u

21、se in daily communication. as a matter of fact, we cant put the blame on where else but on english teaching.because, for most chinese english-learning students today, the main place for them to leam is in the classroom, a place for them to improve their language competence and communicative competen

22、ce. to be more specific, the quality of language teaching decides students language learning, to some extend. however, language teaching is time consuming and low efficiency (dai weidong, 2001:l)as mentioned above.in view of that, in recent decades, there has been the english teaching reform. in cla

23、ssroom setting, the approach of communicative language teaching has been gradually accepted and implemented. people come to realize that the ultimate purpose of language learning is for the daily communication, and class is characterized by the interaction between teachers and students and students

24、among themselves. actually, the effectiveness of the approach is determined, to some extend, by teachers talk. and questioning, as one vital part of teachers talk, is considered to be vital important. in second language classrooms, where learners often dont have a great number of tools, your questio

25、ns provide necessary stepping stones to communication(brown 1994). nunan(1996) emphasizes further that questions can not only involve students into communication, but encourage students to mend their language, so as to be understood, in this way to acquire the language(quoted from richard&lockhart19

26、96). in other words, the quantity and quality of teacher questioning can influence even decide the result of the students language acquisition. due to the importance, teacher questioning has been the focus of research attention in language classrooms for many years (nunan, 1991:192).however, the cur

27、rent researches of teacher questioning in china focus more on discussions of teacher questioning, less on empirical studies. whats more, the few empirical studies direct the attention just to chinese teachers, ignoring another group of people teaching in efl classroom-the foreign teachers. how is th

28、eir questioning quality? do they need any improvement? can we chinese teachers leam something from them for our teaching?1.2 purpose and significance of the studythe ultimate goal of language learning is for language communicative competence.however, this competence can be achieved only when exposed

29、 to genuine language environment through negotiation of meaning. but for most chinese students learning english as a foreign language, the source of language environment is limited to classroom teaching, between teachers and students and students themselves. in this context, teacher questioning, a v

30、ital part of classroom interaction, plays an indispensable part in students language acquisition.one, teacher questioning provide necessary comprehensible input for students.many studies reveal that comprehensible input is the causative reason for second language acquisition. krashen (1982, 1985) ar

31、gues in his input hypothesis, comprehension of language input is the necessary way of language acquisition. language learners acquire a language when they understand input that is a little bit more advanced than their current level of language(quoted from rod ellis, 2001). teacher questioning, an in

32、teraction between teachers and students, aims to elicit oral response from the learners. for that aim, teachers will try every way to make their questions understood to students first. that is, to make their questions understandable to learners. in the course of doing so, they are providing learners

33、 with comprehensible input.two, questioning can induce kinds of negotiation of meaning.negotiation of meaning plays the vital important role in sla. gass (2003 ) holds that through interactive modification of participants in the discourse, negotiation of meaning can effectively put input, learners a

34、ttention and output together. long (1983) shares the same by saying that when one participant fails to understand the other, he/she will tell the other, which will contribute to the interational modification and negotiation of meaning. when the same happens between teachers and students, teachers wi

35、ll try to induce negotiation of meaning.three, teacher questioning can promote language output.the output hypothesis (swain, 1985) claims that besides the comprehensible input, learners must have opportunities to produce the language themselves if they are to become fluent and native like speakers.

36、questioning, as its definition indicates, is to illicit information from learners. in classroom teaching, teachers will try to create opportunities for students to answer questions, to produce language output themselves.in order to contribute to students sla, many chinese teachers are endeavoring to

37、 improve their questioning strategies, expecting to work for students communicative competence. at the same time, many foreign english teachers have been introduced to china, hoping to complement foreign language teaching. as we all know that researchers from english-speaking countries like american

38、, british, canadians have long been working on teacher questioning since stevens systematic study in 1912, and have achieved remarkable results in this aspect. many foreign teachers have been practicing the students-centered classroom teaching model, emphasizing the subjective effect of students, gi

39、ving importance to students imaginative and creative abilities. foreign teachers, in the context, should have some questioning strategies superior to our chinese teachers.the present study, on the one hand, aims to investigate the current situation of teacher questioning from both foreign and chines

40、e teachers in efl classroom; on the other hand, toexplore in which aspect we chinese teachers can make a change for better in teacher questioning. to be specific, the objective of the study is to see the situation of the follows:(1) the ration of display questions and referential questions in foreig

41、n and chinese teachers efl classroom;(2) ways of questioning modification used by foreignl and chinese teachers;(3) the average of wait-time provided by foreign and chinese teachers;(4) varieties of feedback from foreign and chinese teachers;(5) distribution of questions in both foreign and chinese

42、teachers classroom 1.3 organization of the studythis dissertation is composed of six chapters. it begins, in chapter one, with an introduction, which is an exposition of the background, purpose and significance of the study as well as the overall structure of the thesis. chapter two is a general acc

43、ount of the related literature, which first discusses theoretical basis of the study, then presents previous researches on college english teachers questioning at home. chapter three, methodology, first introduces the objective of the study or the research questions, then describes the subjects, car

44、rying-out procedures and analyzing instrument of classroom observation, interview and questionnaires. in chapter four, results and data analysis, major findings from the study will be reported, in combination of detailed analysis. in chapter five, discussion and implication, based on the findings of

45、 the study, a discussion is conducted and some suggestions are proposed for both foreign and chinese teachers improvement of their questioning skills. chapter six is the conclusion of this dissertation, including major findings and limitations of the study.chapter two literature reviewthis chapter f

46、ocuses on the literature related to teacher questioning. it summaries the theoretical frameworks that justify the present study of efl teacher questioning and some key theoretical and empirical studies, past and present.2.1 theoretical background of teacher questioningin the recent 30 years, communi

47、cative approach has been increasingly accepted and implemented in language classrooms, a growing interest in teaching language in use, rather than linguistic usage is found in the literature of second language acquisition. many theoretical frameworks have been proposed to explain how classroom inter

48、action can influence second language development. these theories can also contribute to the issue of teacher questioning.in this part, three major theoretical explanations, input hypothesis, interactive hypothesis and output hypothesis will be introduced in the following lines one after another.2.1.

49、1 input hypothesisinput hypothesis is advanced by stephen krashen (1982, 1985) to explain how learners subconsciously acquire language. according to this hypothesis, learners acquire language as a result of comprehensible input addressed to them. that is, language acquisition depends on comprehensib

50、le input (rod ellis, 2001:47).in explaining his hypothesis, stephen krashen(1982) brought forward the concept of i+1 principle, that is, the language that learners are exposed to should be just far beyond their current competence that they can understand most of it but still be challenged to make pr

51、ogress (hu zhuanglin,2001:371).krashen (1982) gives his further explanation by dividing the hypothesis into four parts: (1) the input hypothesis relates to acquisition, not learning. (2)we acquire by understanding language that contains structure a bit beyond our current level of competence (i+l).(3

52、) this is done with the help of context or extra-linguistic information. when communication is successful, when the input is understood and there is enough of it, i+1 will be provided automatically. (4) production ability emerges. it is not taught directly.teacher questioning, as a way of interactio

53、n between teachers and students in classroom setting, can supply abundant of comprehensible input for l2 learner. according to ellis (1990)，the input features in teachers language include amount of talk, rate of speech, vocabulary, syntactic complexity and correctness. when teaching l2 learners, tea

54、chers are sensitive to their learners level of language competence and respond according to their ability to make understand. they will vary the above-mentioned factors to adjust the amount of talk according to the objective of lessons, to slow down their rate of speech, allowing time for students t

55、o process questions, to vary lexis and simplify syntactic structure etc (henzl,1997; gaies, 1997; hakansson, 1986).2.1.2 interactive hypothesisinspired by krashens input hypothesis, many researchers began to conduct studies on optimal input. two kinds of which have caught researchers attention, they

56、 are pre-modified input and interactively modified input. pre-modified input is material that is finely turned in advance to the learners current level, like plain english reading material; whereas interactively modified input is material (usually spoken discourse) that is modified when the teacher

57、and learners interact(hu, 2001:371). the latter is what is later called interactive hypothesis.interactive hypothesis is put forward by michael long (1980, 1981). it also emphasizes the importance of comprehensible input but claims that it is most effective when it is modified through the negotiatio

58、n of meaning.long (1983，1996)explains his interactive hypothesis further when he argues that two-way communication is better than one-way communication in second language acquisition. in two-way communication (i.e. interactive communication), when a learner fails to comprehend the teacher, he will h

59、ave the chance to signal the teacher, which will impel both sides to conduct negotiation of meaning and interational modification. in this way input can be comprehended.rod ellis (2000:47) states that interaction assists learners in two ways. one is that when learners receive negative evidence, their interlocutors indicate when they have not understood and in the course of so