Chapter I Introduction
1.1 Research Background
In the last couple of years, a lot of teacher-researchers have had a common viewthat teachers should focus on the teaching process, because the factors in the processare very important for students to acquire English knowledge. At the same time, theimportant functions of teachers’ questioning catch a greater attention in the field.Nunan (1991) has ever said that if teachers intend to improve the ability of Englishteaching and learning, they should take more effort to explore the teaching activitiesin classrooms. Teachers’ questioning is an important part of teaching action and auseful means to impart related English knowledge. Brock (1986) describes thatteachers’ questioning in English classrooms can greatly influence the process and theresult of students’ interaction in the process of L2 acquisition.Teachers’ questioning is the most common medium of classroom interaction inthe college English classroom, and the impact of teachers’ questioning in Englishclassroom can play an important role in the teaching activities. But the discussionsand dispute about the approaches and philosophies of teachers’ questioning havecontinued for over 100 years. Domestic educators have carried out a lot of relativestudies from different perspectives. These studies have a great impact on English teaching in colleges. Domestic educators and scholars have gotten productive andeloquent accomplishments from the angles of pedagogy, instructional psychology andepistemology. But owing to the various limitations of different perspectives, theprevious researches on teachers’ questioning did not reveal the dynamic feature ofquestioning. In addition, there are only a small number of researches conducted fromthe perspective of pragmatics in the use of teachers’ questioning in college Englishclass. So the relative study is obviously far from enough, which requires furtherresearch. In a word, most of scholars seldom carry on a quantitative study from thepractical or applied perspective.
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1.2 Significance of the Present Study
The study reveals the features of adaptability and flexibility of teachers’questioning in English class. Through the study, teachers may know about the flexible questioning strategies better and enrich their teaching methods so that they canimprove the quality of interaction between teachers and students and raise theteaching efficiency of English teaching. The non-English majors can be stimulated toparticipate in the activities actively and positively. So the research about teachers’questioning has caught much attention home and abroad for a long time. It has beenproved that teachers’ questioning is very important for the process of learning English.College students may be involved into the interaction in class and they will try tothink and learn by themselves.Teachers’ questioning based on the adaption theory has been one of mostextensive research topic. As a basic teaching method in class, questioning has greatlyattracted many teachers and scholars to examine the relationships between thequestioning strategies and the feedback or interaction in college English class.Through proper questioning, English teachers could stimulate their students to acquirerelative foreign language knowledge in some creative ways. All these benefits requireEnglish teachers to put forward questions based on the theory cleverly. The study ofquestioning is also good for the development of college English teaching. It maycontribute to the reflective teaching process of English teachers which will helpteachers to reflect their daily English teaching process and correct the teachingmistakes.
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Chapter II Literature Review
2.1 Linguistic Adaptation Theory
In this section, the Adaption Theory will be introduced in detail. The theory wasput forward by Jef Verschueren (1987) and it provided the research an importanttheoretical background to reveal the nature and function of questioning. There are different definitions of pragmatics given by different scholars, but theyall share the basic idea that pragmatics is “the study of language in use” (Verschueren,2000:56), or “the science of language in relation to its users” (Mey, 1993:87).Pragmatics studies the way in which people use language. Dealing with issues oflanguage use, pragmatics also focuses on how people create “meaningful”communication or “meaning in interaction” (Thomas, 1995:78). In order tounderstand the relation between pragmatics and other disciplines of linguistics, theauthor investigates Verschueren’s view on pragmatics from the perspective of linguistics. According to the explanation of the General Secretary of InternationalPragmatics Association, pragmatics is nothing more than an epistemologicalperspective or theoretical framework of human cognition, such as linguistics. What ismore, people are seen as adapting themselves in terms of language meaning of things.Rather than treating it as an umpteenth separable branch of linguistics, Verschueren(1987) views pragmatics as a perspective, a specific way of appreciating a wide rangeof linguistic phenomena. No matter how pragmatics was interpreted, there is no doubtthat the most important tenets should be the analysis of the interaction between thetarget speaker and the specific language. Scholars want to reveal the questions “Whatdo people do when using language? Or what do they do by means of language? Orwhat happens to people when using language?”
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2.2 Research on Teachers’ Questioning
It is very obvious that teachers’ questioning is so useful in English class thatmany scholars are attracted to study it from various angles of theories. This sectionfocuses on the literature about teachers’ questioning in order to realize its nature andfunctions. Teachers’ questioning has been an important teaching means since 5BC.Although it has a very long history in teaching field, there is no specific and cleardefinition. There are many different explanations from different theoreticalperspectives. Question originated from a Latin word quaerere. It refers to explore orgain something through requirements or inquiry. On a broader scale, it is “listener orreader and asks for an expression of fact, opinion, belief, etc.”(Richards, 2000:221)The definition of questioning in the sixth edition of Collins English Dictionary is“enthusiastic or eager for philosophical or other investigations”. From the perspectiveof Ur (1996:104), “questioning is defined as a teacher’s utterance which has theobjective of eliciting an oral response from the learner(s)”.In the field of education, teachers’ questioning is a teaching method used toactuate their students to reflect and give an accurate reply to the message fromteachers. Teachers’ questioning is often considered as an important means ofinteraction because it can combine the learning process with the teaching process. Itcan also improve the awareness of learning by means of the process of looking foranswers. So Dillon ever thought that “...teacher’s questions, the better a teacher’steaching and a class’s learning” (Dillon, 1988:38).
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Chapter III Methodology .........21
3.1 Research Questions......21
3.2 Subjects............22
3.3 Instruments.............22
3.4 Procedure.........23
3.5 Data Collection and Analysis.........24
Chapter IV Results and Discussion......26
4.1 Result of Teachers’ Questioning...........26
4.2 Discussion about Adaptive Objects of Teachers’ Questioning.......29
4.3 Discussion about the Patterns of Teachers’ Questioning....47
Chapter VI Conclusion.............51
Chapter IV Results and Discussion
4.1 Result of the Teachers’ questioning
According to the research, it is obvious that questioning process is a kind ofdynamic and impressionable process. There are some adaptive objectives, questioningpatterns during the process and the patterns may vary in different cases. The researcher found that teachers’ questioning is affected by some factorsincluding context, linguistics, atmospheres and social factors. So there are someadaptive objectives in the process of questioning. It is a dynamic process. From theresult of research, it can be found that teachers have to meet the requirements ofcontextual correlates and the structural levels. The specific result is displayed in Table4: From the table, it can be found that 90 percent of teachers believe that the classsize and attitudes will affect the use of questioning. And all the teachers think that theatmospheres play a decisive role in the teaching process. Besides the class size,attitudes and atmospheres, 80％of teachers think that class time is also an importantfactor in the questioning process. By contrast, although 60％of teachers recognize theimportance of text, teaching tools and major, they think these factors cannot affect theprocess of questioning. From the table, it can be found that in college English class,teachers’ questioning should be the result of the adaptation of context and linguistics.It is determined by some factors.
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Conclusion
Teachers’ questioning has become a very hot research topic all over the worldsince 1970s. Many researchers have carried on some related researches from theperspectives of psychology and pedagogy, but most of them are descriptive and static.Verchueren provides a systematic conceptual framework for researchers to studylanguage phenomena with adaption theory. In addition, most of related researches didnot explain the dynamic features of teachers’ questioning because of various factors.Adaption theory offers a scientific theoretical framework for the study oflinguistics dynamically from the perspective of pragmatic application. On the basis ofthe researches home and abroad, the present study analyzed the questioning in collegeEnglish classroom on the basis of the framework of Adaption Theory aiming toexplore the process or feature teachers’ questioning in college English classroom.The survey analyzes the employment of questioning in English class with thefollowing main findings through quantitative and qualitative methods.First, the Adaption Theory in the process of teachers’ questioning providesteachers with the sound theoretical basis. The application of Adaption Theory inquestioning is useful for teachers to adapt to the teaching objectives on the basis ofthe College English Curriculum Requirements and meet the requirements of society.Second, according to research above, it can be concluded that the questioningprocess is a kind of choice making process. The most common questions in theprocess of teachers’ questioning are the use of convergent questions and divergentquestions. But there are some factors which can affect the use of questioning. So theuse of questioning varies frequently due to these factors including the learningproficiency, motivation, attitudes and so on.
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