Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
During the teaching process, a teacher questions is one of the commonly usedteaching methods. The quality of question will not only influence the effect ofclassroom teaching, but also affect students’ learning in class and after class. As aresult of its vital importance, teacher question has been “the focus of researchattention in Language classrooms for many years” (Nunan, 1991). It has been provedthat the classroom learning can be improved surely by transferring from askingquestions to making statements. As early as 1912, American scholar R.Stevens made astudy on teacher questions systematically at the first time. Since then, a teacherquestions was regarded as the core of effective teaching. Because it is the majorsource of comprehensible target language input, the student is likely to receive it inthe foreign language classroom teaching (Nunan, 1991). Ellis (1994) restated thefunction of teacher questions to the second language acquisition. He concluded thatteacher questions would control the discourse of the whole class. Brown (2000)analyzed that the function of teacher questions can be: 1) to provide students with theopportunities to express themselves in English; 2) to develop students’ ability to thinkand communicate by students’ discussing; 3)to examine students’ understanding by tteacher questions; 4) to help students to get their own opinion by teacher questions.Questions can stimulate students to think and provide feedback for the teacher aboutstudents’ understanding (Chin, 2006). Most recent surveys have put more emphasis onthe quantity of teacher questions rather than its quality or effectiveness, which shouldbe considered more significant in language teaching. Teachers need to understand anddevelop teacher question comprehensively.
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1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study
Reading is a main way to get information; it is also one of the major tasks forEnglish learning. It is demanded in new English Curriculum Standard that students’reading ability should be educated. Teachers should emphasis on the training ofstudents’ reading strategy, the cultivation of the language sense, especially the abilityto obtain and handle information during their reading. The educating of students’ability in reading is a main task in senior English teaching. Compared with listening,speaking and writing classes, reading teaching takes more time, the total score ofEnglish in college entrance examination is 150 while the score of readingcomprehending is 40. This is one of the reasons why English reading teaching andlearning is a focus for many years. It is obvious that reading learning can be affectedby background information to reading material, learners’ vocabulary, syntacticstructure, reading strategies and learners’ interests etc.So, it is a common phenomenon that some English teachers treat readingteaching as grammar teaching or vocabulary teaching, only few English teachersemphasis on the training of students’ reading ability. People can notice that thoughthere are few teacher questions, the reading teaching can be a successful one in someteachers’ reading class. However, teacher questions which as one of the commonteaching strategies in class learning and the most influential teaching art (Taba, 1984)also plays an important part in reading class. Reading class can be divided into:pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading. All these three parts should concernabout what problems will be solved. Teachers can elicit questions or topics, activatestudents’ existing knowledge, lead students to foresee the topic by questioning duringpre-reading.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Introduction to reading
All people have their own aim while reading. Williams etc.(2004) pointed out thepurpose of reading can be concluded into three aspects: to get general information, toachieve the specific information and to be pleasure or interest. Grellet (2006)concluded that people read for deriving pleasure and getting information. The purposefor reading in English reading teaching has its characters which is different fromnormal reading. English reading teaching not only requires learners to appreciate thetext, get information from the text, but asks students to master the language points andimprove their reading ability and skills. During the teaching, teachers should askstudents questions properly according to their teaching goals and students’ needs. The model takes the concept theory as the foundation. Goodman thoughtlearners can foresee the reading material before reading according to the syntacticknowledge and semantic knowledge which existing in their brains, then they canconfirm and modify in the reading process. According to this mode, reading activity isactually the practice of knowledge and implementation of a language. Reading isactually a process of creative thinking. The limitation in this model is teachers willemphasis more on the function of the background information in learnersunderstanding.
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2.2 Definition of Questions and Effective Teacher Questions
According to Jack and Richard (2010), a question refers to a way in which alistener or reader uses to ask for fact, opinion, belief, etc. Ur (2000) considered,“question in the context of teaching may be defined as a teacher utterance which hasthe objective of eliciting an oral response from the learners.” According to Wilen(1982), question is “a specialized sentence possessing either an interrogative form orfunction. When raised by teachers, questions are instructional cues suggesting tostudents content elements to be learned and ways of learning or experiencing anddirections for what they are to do and how they are to do it.”The above-quoted definitions emphasize the purpose of question is to elicit theinformation from students in the form of verbal utterance. Thus, the teacher questionsis to evaluate what students know. Yet they ignore the interaction between the teacherand the students and they don’t involve in teacher’s feedback to students’ responses.So they neglect the fact that the purpose of teacher questioning is not only to assessstudents’ knowledge, but also to foster students’ thinking and promote their learning.Thus, question in formative assessment is not defined at all. Chin (2007) regardsquestion as not only a strategy of assessing students’ knowledge, but also a tool ofpromoting their learning. This point is consulted in this thesis, thus teacher questions,from the perspective of formative assessment, is conceptualized to foster students’thinking, to elicit information or a response, to encourage them to elaborate on theirprevious answers and ideas, and to help students’ language learning.
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Chapter Three Methodology .........25
3.1 Research Questions .........25
3.2 Subjects ......25
3.3 Research instruments ......26
3.4 Data collection .........28
3.5 Data Analysis ....29
3.6 Summary ....30
Chapter Four Results and discussion ..........31
4.1 The results of questionnaire and classroom observation.........31
4.2 Result from the experiment....37
4.3 Summary ....38
Chapter Five Suggestions and conclusions ........39
5.1 Main Research Findings.........39
5.2 Limitations ........40
5.3 Implications.......40
5.4 Suggestions on reading class questions.......41
Chapter Four Results and discussion
4.1 The results of questionnaire and classroom observation
T3 was the eldest teacher in this study, other three were younger than her.Though their total question number was different, it was also close to the averagequestion number. The total questions asked in one reading class were 203. Theaverage question number was 51. The most one was 60 in T1’s reading class. Theleast one was 43 in T2’s reading class. T3’s question number and T4’s questionnumber was very close to the average question number. In addition, it was obviousfrom the questionnaire that 97% of students thought their teachers’ questionaccounted for 70% to 90% of their teachers’ talk.
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Conclusion
After the analyzing of classroom observation, questionnaire and interview, it canbe concluded that the teachers in Changshun Minzu Senior High School usually askdisplay questions and referential questions in their reading class, but the ratio ofdisplay questions was more than that of referential questions. The reason why therewere more display questions than referential questions was that some students even inthe top class can not express their opinions or ideas in English when asked referentialquestions. Another reason from the students was that they were blank-minded whenasked referential questions. Some students said they were reluctant to think in such atime-limited class, they preferred the teacher guide them to finish the task in the text. According to the research data, it was obvious that the male teacher inChangshun Minzu Senior High School asked fewer questions than female teachers.And their teaching years could affect their question numbers and types. The longer theteacher involved in teaching, the fewer questions they asked. The younger teacherspreferred to asked referential questions. So the conclusion was that teacher questionscan vary in relation to teacher’s gender and their teaching years.
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Reference (omitted)