2.4.2 While-questioning 9

2.4.3 Post-questioning 9

3. Case Study 11

3.1 Analysis of Types of Questions 11

3.2 Case Study of the First-place Winner 12

3.2.1 Types of Questions 12

3.2.2 The techniques and skills used in Miss Yao’s class 14

4. Conclusion 15

References 16

1. Introduction  

Nowadays, an obvious problem that EFL(English as a foreign language) teachers are facing is that students are taciturn and uncooperative in class, and avoid interacting with teachers. Thus here comes the core idea that we are going to discuss--teachers’ question. As questioning is the main interaction method in classroom teaching, to over-all understand it is of vital importance. It is quite easy for a class to be a tiresome, boring solo for the teacher, if he or she could only offer a teacher-oriented class and neglect the value of teachers’ question. However, it is not enough to have successful interaction with students, if the teacher clearly knows the importance without any skills and principles. Some teachers always ask simplex questions; some like “Yes or No” ones. I admit that each type of questions has its own value, but how to make them valuable and how to best apply them in teaching deserves to be researched.

Teachers’ Question, as one of the education activities, has always been a research emphasis for teachers. Constantly questioning in class, can fuel the enthusiasm and initiative of students, stimulate their interests of learning. Besides, questioning creates favorable conditions of teaching, and liven up the class as well. Thus, the benefits that teachers’ question makes to language learning, are much more prominent compared to other lessons. The final goal of language learning is to acquire language communicative competence, which can only be gotten via practicing through interaction in the target language. For Chinese students who take English as the second language, they seldom have the opportunity to talk to native English speakers. Instead, most of the communications happen between teachers and students or students and students. To some extent, teachers’ question is actually a communicative competence condition that teachers create, to help students gain the ability of communicating by the process of solving problems. 

1.1 Significance of Teachers’ Question

Questioning is one of the most efficient teaching methods that teachers use to give instructions or transfer knowledge. Students will seek for information and cultivate their logical thinking via responding. Following are the main significance of teachers’ question.

1.1.1 Effectively organize and inspect teaching

Whether a teacher has the super-duper ability of classroom management, can largely decide whether the class is successful or not. Effectively questioning, happens to be the effective way of classroom organization. Before the class, teachers can do lead-in via questioning, to conduct students into a curious and awaiting mental status. By doing that, students will have deep thinking and hope to get answers from learning, which helps them focus on the teaching content in class. If some students are distracted, teachers can question them, lead them back to the class to guarantee the course scheduling. What’s more, with potent questioning, teachers can glimpse into the minds of students to find out not only what they know or don' t know but also how they think about a topic. In the meanwhile, students can search for their pros and cons to get a higher level. 

We can also find two functions of teachers’ question in this significance: diagnostic and instructional.