Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Classroom questioning is not only an indispensible part of the teaching processbut also a common and necessary practice. Questioning is a very important channelfor teachers to produce information and get the teaching feedback. It is a necessarytechnique of classroom training and ability improvement. In English as a foreignlanguage (EFL) classroom, questions from teachers comprise a large proportion of theclassroom discourse.Second language researchers have examined the contribution of teachers'questions to classroom language learning. Banbrook and Skehan (1989: 142) haveproposed that the questions play a crucial role in language acquisition: "They can beused to allow the learner to keep participating in the discourse and even modify it sothat the language used becomes more comprehensible and personally relevant".In view of the importance of questioning as a teaching strategy, the skill withwhich teachers use questions has received a considerable amount of attention inteacher education. Researches around classroom questioning mainly focus on thequestioning types, wait time, questioning strategy and so on.On the other hand, researchers in recent years picture teaching as a thinkingactivity. Concomitant with this conceptualization of teaching as a thinking activity,there has been an increase research into teachers’ beliefs (Borg, 2017).Findings revealing the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices haveyielded a lot of insights in enlightening teaching, teacher training and teachers’professional development. Previous studies have compared the extent to whichteachers’ stated beliefs are correlated with their practices through qualitative andquantitative studies.
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1.2 Significance of the Research
Questioning is an important form of interaction in the class context. Sinclair andCoulthard (1975) conclude: A typical exchange in the classroom consists of aninitiation by the teacher, followed by a response from the pupil, followed by feedbackto the pupil’s response from the teacher. Teaching is as much about what we askstudents as what we tell them. Strategic questioning enables teachers to check forcomprehension, keeps students engaged and deepens students’ understanding ofcomplex concepts (Feldman, 2017). Teachers pay much attention to classroomquestioning. Whereas, there exists many common problems in classroom questioning,such as lack of questioning purposes, over-simplification of questioning,excessiveness of closed questions, students’ reluctance to answer, etc. What is more,some of the questions raised are not well prepared. Quite a lot of teachers are notcompetent enough to induce students to come up with the right answer. The quality ofquestioning in EFL classroom has the direct bearing on the quality of teaching.It is a general acceptance that teachers’ beliefs play an essential role in relation toinstructional practices. Pajares (1992: 307) states: “Few would argue that the beliefsteachers hold influence their perceptions and judgments, which, in return, affect theirbehavior in the classroom.” Thus teachers’ belief about questioning is of greatimportance to their questioning behavior in the classroom.
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Chapter Two literature review
2.1 Classroom Questioning
Classroom questioning has been long noticed by language teachers and languag，英语论文，英语论文范文
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