Art of Questioning in English Teaching 论英语课堂提问艺术.doc

本科生毕业论文（设计）题 目art of questioning in english teaching 论英语课堂提问艺术专 业英 语院 系外国语学院学 号0803420210姓 名 指导教师 答辩时间二0一二年 四 月论文工作时间： 2011年5月 至 2012年 4月论英语课堂提问艺术 摘要： 语言是交流的工具，英语教学不是一种输入或输出的方式，也不是一种传递的方式。学生必须能独自思考，说出和写下所学的东西。这就是英语教学的实用特征。提问是完全体现这种特征的重要方式之一，为了完善这一特征的重要性，教师们通过提问来启发和激发学生。中学生老是被教师叫起来，但是回答不上问题。除了学生自己的知识水平，问题的难易程度之外，教师提问的技巧和质量也有很大关系。在传统意义上，提问已经被看作教师说话的一部分和有效的课堂教学的核心部分。提问是教师用来激发学生思考和让学生意识到他们的目标的基本手段，因此提问在外语学习过程中扮演一个重要的角色。本文将首先介绍教师提问的定义，特征，类型，然后介绍英语课堂互动中出现的一些问题，英语课堂上教师提问应尊循的一些原则，最后介绍有效的英语提问技巧。关键词：英语教学;教师提问;提问技巧 art of questioning in english teaching abstract: a language is a tool of human communication. english teaching is really not a way to input or output; it is not a way of transmission. students must personally think, speak, and write what they are taught, which is the practical feature of english teaching. questioning is one of important methods which embody this feature completely. teachers apply asking questions to enlighten and stimulate students in order to perfect this vital importance. students who are in middle schools are asked but always do not give answers. except for learners own quality and degree of difficulty of questions, it is connected with teachers quality of asking questions. teachers questioning has traditionally been viewed as an important constituent of teachers talk and the core of effective teaching in classroom context, questioning is the basic means used by teachers to challenge students to think and help students to realize their desired goals, thus play a key role in the foreign language acquisition. this paper will first introduce the definition, the features of teachers questioning and types of teachers questioning, then introduce the rules for teachers putting forward questions, it will also give some practical suggestions, focusing on good questions, wait-time, feedback and allocations.key words: english teaching; teachers questioning; questioning techniquescontents 1. introduction12. brief introduction to questioning1 2.1 the definition of questioning1 2.2 the features of classroom questioning2 2.3 the types of questions used in english classes2 2.3.1 factual questions and reasoning questions2 2.3.2 closed-questions and open-questions33. the problem in classroom interaction and its causes3 3.1 students lack of competence in communication3 3.2 causes for students lack of communicative competence.44. the rules of putting forward questions4 4.1 questioning on the basis of teaching 0utline.4 4.2 making the questions leveled and variable5 4.3 putting forward questions clearly and concretely5 4.4 making the degree of difficulty appropriate65. positive meanings of questioning students effectively6 5.1 increasing and holding students interest in learning english6 5.2 inspiring students thinking in english7 5.3 finding out students own learning drawbacks7 5.4 helping teachers check the way of students understanding and analyzing problems7 5.5 inspiring students consciousness of participanting in teaching activities76. effective questioning techniques8 6.1 raising good questions8 6.2 providing proper wait-time97. conclusion11bibliography12acknowledgements131. introduction questioning has been considered as one of the most essential and important techniques in instructional process since the time of socrates. from 1970s, many aspects of effective teaching have been documented and suggested as the basis for models of effective teaching. the commonly identified characteristic of effective teaching is the teachers use of questioning. and the quantity of teachers questioning has been the focus of many studies. the early studies showed that teachers asked a lot of questions both in content classroom and language classroom. there are several reasons why questions are so commonly used in teaching. the act of asking questions helps teachers keep students actively involved in lessons, while answering questions, students have the opportunity to openly express their ideas and thoughts, questioning students enables other students to hear different explanations of the material by their peers. foreign language researchers have also made a great contribution, scholars proposed that questions played a crucial role in language acquisition; they can be used to allow the learners to keep participating in the discourse and even modify it so that the language becomes more comprehensible and personally relevant. because of the role, it is important for teachers to find the importance and conduct research into this phenomenon. however, only within the last decade and a half have extensive researches been directed to questions and questioning strategies. the information, which has been generated from these researches, indicates that teachers largely have been asking the wrong questions.2. brief introduction to questioning 2.1 the definition of questioning the word “question” comes from the latin verb “queerer” which means to seek. words like acquire, require, inquire which include the meaning to gain something from the others have the same root with “question”. a question is a sentence which is addressed to listener or reader and asks for an expression of opinion, belief, etc. richards cassock and iyortsuun state that questions are statements for which reply is expected. borich once defined question as a verbal device used to solicit responses from others. from the educational perspective, teachers questions are those questions used by teachers to prompt students to think and respond to the content of teachers messages. since teachers questions will enable students to bring their own thoughts and feelings into expression through the answers, teachers questioning can be regarded as an interactive process which aims to involve students in the learning process and elicit thoughtful responses. one thing is that deserves peoples attention is teachers questioning is not necessarily the interrogatives. interrogative sentence is a sentence which is in the form of a question. richards gave an example:“did you open the window?” is both a question and an interrogative. but sentences like “could you shut the window?” is an interrogative, not a question, the function of this sentence may be a request for someone to shut the window but not a question about whether or not the person is able to do so. in fact, this problem is concerned with the relationship between the linguistic and illocutive, that is, the relationship between non-interrogative utterances in the form of questions and interrogative utterances which are not in a form of questions.2.2 the features of classroom questioningpertinent: the teachers should follow and question the complexity of the content, and determine different targets. while questioning the content of the rudimentary knowledge, they can face the students of poor degree, but face middle and upper degree students when the questions knowledge is of difficult point. for this reason, teachers should design the depth and scope when asking questions. not only face all students but also pay attention to the individual charactersistic in order to fully reflect its pertinence.exciting: a german educationist once said that the art of teaching is waking up and encouragement. to encourage students to take part in the class actively, namely, to make the atmosphere relaxed and exciting, teachers should apply various methods to teach, such as playing games, singing songs, or giving a speech and so on. on the contrary, if teachers just always talk without passion in class, students must lose interest day by day.2.3 the types of questions used in english classes the types of questions that the teachers ask affect the kind of responses that the students produce; studies of questioning have proposed various categories of questions. in this section, question types that are important to the analysis of language classrooms will be considered.2.3.1 factual questions and reasoning questionsa common way of classifying questions is to look at the question word used: questions that begin with “what” “when” “who” and “where” are considered as factual questions while those that begin with “how” and “why” are classified as reasoning questions, but this is not absolute. in order to see whether this classification helps to understand the nature of questions and compare the “what” question and the “how” question in the following text, you can say that the first one is a factual question and the other is a reasoning question. the teacher is discussing the text entitled the population surprise with the students in class.t：what essentially affects human population?s：modernity or human values. the teacher is discussing the text entitled for or against smoking in public places with the students in class.t: why is the author for smoking in the public？s: because public places belong to both smokers and nonsmokers.2.3.2 closed-questions and open-questionslook at the following two conversations:the teacher is checking the students understanding of the title of the text under discussing scared smokeless, which means the author was scared by the two scares on his body and therefore gave up smoking forever. t: mary? yesterday we learned the text entitled scared smokeless. what does it mean? s: sorry. i dont understand it. t: sit down, please. tom. do you know? bahia thinks the scars resulted from the surgery operations that scared him to stop smoking.t: good. are you clear? it was the scars that scared him to give up smoking, sit down please. it is monday, and the students are a little tired, the teacher wants to ask the students a few free questions to enable them to concentrate on the lesson.t: i am curious about what did you do at the weekend, jean, what did you do? can you tell us?on saturday morning, i did some washing and in the afternoon i slept in bed. on sunday morning, i went to visit several of my classmates. i came back at about 4:00.t: oh, no wonder that you look so tired.t: lily, how about you?s: i went to peking university to visit my brother with my parents on saturday, on sunday, i just stayed at home, surfing the internet and doing my homework.in the first example, the teachers question has only one answer although the students may express it in a variety of ways. but in the second example, for the same question, different students have different answers. thus, if teachers questions are classified in terms of students language output, there are two kinds: questions that have only one acceptable answer and those that have a range of acceptable ones. barnes refers to that former as closed-questions and the later as open-questions, for they stimulate students to think more and speak more. therefore, the classroom seems to be more interactive.3. the problem in classroom interaction and its causes3.1 students lack of competence in communication it is generally acknowledged that most english as a foreign language students are less competent communicatively than linguistically. since almost questioning constitutes a major part of classroom instruction, it is really true that many teachers often complain that their students are rather reluctant to participate in classroom interaction. many students have low confidence and feel uneasy when they speak english. this unease is often reinforced by students anxiety to speak well and some teachers feedback and assessment techniques. teachers need to provide more and better opportunities for students to develop their oral skills and use these skills in learning progress. it is also necessary for teachers to develop their questioning techniques to encourage their students to involve in the learning process which both sides seem to want.most students are not as competent communicatively as they are linguistically. there are two main reasons for this: traditional teacher-centered instruction and teachers problematic questioning. the classroom has traditionally been centered, and in many subject areas it often still is. teachers talk much more than students and teachers usually control the subjects that are discussed in the classroom. it is apparent that, normally, the teacher is in control of three out of four speaking turns while the student is given only the response turn. there is a widely shared belief among teachers that the english foreign as a language classroom is a place for imparting knowledge about the target language and where the linguistic core of the lesson is the main concern. therefore students are seldom given any chances to use the target language. moreover, in teacher-centered classroom, students are rather passive.3.2 causes for students lack of communicative competencethere are many reasons for the problem. they may be a dull textbook, a dark classroom, an unpleasant topic, etc. however, as far as teachers are concerned, this problem is mainly caused by two factors, that is traditional teacher-centered classroom instruction and teachers problematic questioning.4. the rules of putting forward questions it is clearly that the way the teachers put forward questions directly influences the teaching effect. the key is that teachers should ask students questions in an effective way.4.1 questioning on the basis of teaching 0utlinequestions should be well designed according to the teaching outline, which can embody the difficult and important language points of teaching contents. questions far away from the teaching plan are of no value. teachers should be clever at putting forward questions, especially paying more attention to the key points and leading students to think for finding solutions. look at unit 4 “communication in the future from practical english. the important language points in this passage are the present tense and present progressive. teachers should require students to grasp the uses of the present tense. after explaining the passage, teachers can give the following questions: 1) have communications throughout the world been improved greatly in the last fifty years? 2) has the use of satellites increased the speed of communications? 3) what have scientists been developing recently? these kinds of questions can help students grasp the nuclear grammar.4.2 making the questions leveled and variableonly after asking students lowlevel questions can teachers move to highlevel ones. if teachers want students to be active in class, questions should be presented in different ways, which are as follows:(1) individual answer-teachers ask some specific student to answer.(2) group discussion-the whole group discuss the questions together, and finally one of them stands for the group to answer and others of the group give the supplement.(3) class discussion-the whole class discuss the same topic, express their own ideas and finally arrive at the correct answer.for example, there is an essay written by senior students who will soon graduate, telling how the author feels about his college life. questions can be like this: how do you feel about his college life as a freshman? or do you think the author has confidence in the coming graduation? why?no.1 question is to the students real life and every student can express their ideas individually. no.2 question is concerted with the most part of the passage, which is for the groups to discuss. no.3 question requires students to have an understanding of the whole lesson and then reach the answer, which needs the whole class effort. in details, questions, which are either oral or written, can be from concrete to abstract, from low level to high level, from true or false to “what” question and then “why” question. on the other hand, question varies in different stages of teaching because of different teaching purposes. 4.3 putting forward questions clearly and concretely vague or big questions will increase the difficulty of students understanding, such as “what about your idea on education?”. questions given in long sentences will increase the burden of students memory and the difficulty of understanding them. students cant grasp the main points of the questions easily. sometimes they even misunderstand the questions so that questions are meaningless and teachers cant reach the teaching purpose of questioning students. clear questions can make students grasp the main points quickly and students can predict the answers. in this way teaching activity can go smoothly. for instance, in unit 3-james cleveland owens -the last paragraph says: his gold medals changed his life. they have kept me alive over the years, he once said: time has stood still for me. that gold moment dies hard. the question can be like this: owens earned his living by selling his gold medals, didnt he? this question is very concrete and it can make students think of the words given by owens very carefully.4.4 making the degree of difficulty appropriate questions should be appropriate for students english level. teachers should design questions, yet not too difficult nor too easy. if designed questions are complicated, students will have no confidence and therefore refuse to answer them. maybe some of them have a try but they cant give correct answers and their thoughts will also be prevented. if designed questions are very simple, students may look down upon the simple questions and will be reluctant to answer them. even if students are willing to, they wont have the sense of achievement. both kinds of questions will make students lose interest in questions themselves and are u