Abstract

Teacher’s discourse plays an important role in classroom teaching, and it has attracted much attention of researchers. There are many branches of teacher’s discourse, such as greeting, questioning, giving instructions and etc. This paper focuses on teacher questioning discourse in EFL classes of elementary schools. Questioning is an approach used by teachers for the purpose of communication. It is beneficial to cultivate students’ thinking ability and creativity. 

This research focuses on the teacher questioning discourse in primary schools. This analysis of teacher’s questioning discourse describes six teachers’ questioning behaviors. By transcribing six video classes, the features of teacher’s questioning will be revealed: briefness, vividness and accuracy. This paper analyzes teacher’s questioning in three major areas: the way questions are answered, question types and teachers’ feedbacks. This research shows that: (1) These excellent primary school English teachers prefer nominating and chorus-answering to volunteering and self-answering. (2) Display questions account for the largest part of teacher questioning talk, among the three types, which are procedural questions, display questions and referential questions. (3) Six teachers usually give students positive feedbacks. This research throws some light on the field of promoting teacher questioning, with the purpose of improving teaching efficiency. 

Key words: English teaching; primary schools; teacher talk; teacher questioning

Contents

Abstract

摘要

Chapter One Introduction 1

Chapter Two Literature Review. 2

 2.1 Teacher Talk 2

  2.1.1 Definition of Teacher Talk. 2

  2.1.2 Recent Studies on Teacher Talk. 3

 2.2 Teacher’s Questioning. 3

  2.2.1 Definition of Questioning 3

  2.2.2 Researches on How Questions are Answered 3

  2.2.3 Views on Classifications of Teacher’s Questions 4

  2.2.4 Teacher’s Feedback 5  

Chapter Three Research Methodology 6

 3.1 Research Questions. 6

 3.2 Research Subjects 6

 3.3 Research Methods. 7

 3.4 Data Collection 7

Chapter Four Data Analysis and Discussion. 7

 4.1 Investigation into the Ways Questions are Answered. 7

 4.2 Investigation into Types of Questions. 10

  4.2.1 The Use of Procedural Questions 10

  4.2.2 The Use of Display Questions  11

  4.2.3 The Use of Referential Questions 12

  4.2.4 Question Types and the Students’ Responses . 13

 4.3 Investigation into Teacher’s Feedback 14

  4.3.1 More Positive Feedback Than Negative Feedback. 14

  4.3.2 Types of Positive Feedback. 15

  4.3.3 Types of Negative Feedback. 16

Chapter Five Conclusion and Implication 17

References. 19