基于思维品质的高中英语阅读课堂教师提问的教育调查研究

本文是一篇教育论文研究，在英语阅读课的提问过程中，大多数英语阅读课都涵盖了这三类问题。它们是展示性问题、参考性问题和评价性问题。也就是说，低阶思维和高阶思维问题都出现了，学生的思维素质基本上是从低到高依次培养的。在所有的班级中，显示问题是最常见的，因此表面理解和短期记忆能力的发展最为普遍。然后是参考问题。参照问题侧重于文本信息的应用，能提高学生的思维品质。评价性问题在课堂上被问得最少。三老师的课上甚至没有评价性的问题。在所有的班级中，教师提出的三类问题比例都不合适。教师问太多的展示性问题，而评价性问题太少。这意味着学生较高层次的思维素质没有得到很好的发展，这可能导致学生缺乏独立思考和创新思维的能力。

Chapter OneIntroduction

1.1 Research Background
Teacher’s questioning is an indispensable part in teaching activities. It is one ofthe most common teaching methods. Effective questions can not only inspire studentsto participate in classroom discussions actively and promote efficient interactionbetween teachers and students, but also can promote and facilitate the development ofstudents’ thinking ability. It has a great impact on the cultivation of students’ thinkingquality, so it is one of the important ways to develop students’ thinking qualities.
The National English Curriculum Standards (2017) aims to cultivate and developstudents’ core competencies—language competence, cultural awareness, thinkingquality and learning ability. In addition, thinking quality is valued as one of the corecompetencies by scholars with reform of the new English curriculum. A greatemphasis has been laid on the cultivation of students’ thinking qualities. ChengXiaotang (2016) deems that “thinking quality refers to the thinking ability related toEnglish learning”(p.79-86). In the present, students in school develop thinkingqualities mainly from reading classes. The National English Curriculum Standards(2017) says, “In senior high school, developing thinking and enlightening wisdom isthe core value of English reading teaching, which is helpful to improve students’ability to analyze and solve problems, so that they can observe and understand theworld from many angles and make correct value judgments on things”(p.5). AlthoughEnglish teaching pays much more attention to thinking quality, due to the shackles ofexam-oriented education, teachers mainly care about memory, understanding and partof the application of knowledge. The attention to the development of analytical,reflective and critical thinking in the process of language learning is far from enough,and the usage of high-level thinking to develop language competence is alsoinsufficient. As a consequence, most students don’t obtain the reading abilities anddevelop their thinking qualities very well. Chen Lei (2008) concludes that questioningplays an crucial role in students’ comprehension of reading passages and thedevelopment of students’ high level thinking (p.58-62). Related to thinking quality,Zhang Lianzhong (2016) not only gives out the definition of thinking quality, but alsoshows the influences of teachers’ questioning on it in English reading classes(p.12-15). In order to get the actual circumstances of teachers’ questioning in Englishreading classes and activate students to find a more proper way to develop theirthinking qualities, this thesis focuses on teachers’ questioning in English readingclasses.
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1.2 Significance and Purpose of the Research
Effective questions play a indispensable role in developing students’ thinkingqualities. Reading is considered as an important and irreplaceable skill in the newEnglish Curriculum. Therefore, many researches focus on questions in reading classes.However, existing studies pay much attention on the analysis of teacher questions inclass, such as the classification, the function, and the questioning strategies. Fewresearches in recent years are laid on the impact of teachers’ questioning on students’thinking qualities in English classroom in senior high school.
According to the background, this thesis meant to focus on the present actualcircumstances of teachers’ questioning in English reading classes from the perspectiveof thinking quality based on the revised Bloom’s cognitive taxonomy (2001). Duringthe process, the author finds some problems of teachers’ questioning in readingclasses. Then some reasonable suggestions will be provided for questioning studentsin an appropriate way based on thinking qualities.
For the significance of the study, researchers and teachers can insight into thecurrent situations and get inspirations in their further studies in this area. It can alsohelp teachers to recognize their existing problems in the design of questions, and totake the effective measures to improve the validity of questions in reading classes.The most importantly, the research can provide teaching enlightenment for improvingthe current situation of students’ thinking abilities in high school English teaching.
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Chapter TwoLiterature Review

2.1 Related Concepts of Questions and Questioning
Different researchers have different definitions and emphasis on questions andquestioning, then the author will explain them separately below.
2.1.1 Categories and Characteristics of Questions
Articles on the subject of classroom questioning often begin by quoting Socrates.“Researchers and other writers concerned with questioning techniques seem to remindus that questioning has a long and venerable history as an educational strategy”(Cotton, 2001, p.1). That is to say, it has a long history to study questions withoutquery. In the Collins COBUILD Dictionary, a question is defined as “something yousay or write in order to ask a person about something”. Some educators andresearchers also give their own definition of questions. Just as Cook (2002) said, “aquestion can be defined as sentences that are addressed to a reader and ask forexpressions of facts, opinions”(p.37). Linda and Richard (2016) assume “a question isa problem or matter open to discussion or inquiry; something that is asked, as inseeking to learn or acquire knowledge”(p.14). They argue that the questions in disputedetermine the direction of thinking and the intellectual task right beside one. Theauthor is quite agree with the idea of Linda and Richard. Due to the versatile andmultifaceted nature of questions, some of their definitions and classifications are stillcausing controversies, in spite of a considerable number of authoritative scholarlystudies in the field. “Most difficulties can be accounted for by the fact that it isvirtually impossible to combine formal, interactive, and pragmatic criteria into asingle valid definition”(Ilie, 2015, p.26).

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2.2 Thinking Quality
Thinking quality is considered as a key competency of science. In 2014, thinkingquality first came into people’s views as a new concept in China. There are manyterms used to define students’ thinking, such as creative thinking, critical thinking,thinking quality and so on. In this paper, thinking quality is used because it is a keypoint in the National English Curriculum Standards (2017). In this section, definition,components and significance of thinking quality are discussed and analyzed.
2.2.1 Definition of Thinking Quality
Lin Chongde (2009) gives the definition of thinking quality from the angle of allsubjects. According to Lin Chongde, the definition of thinking quality is that thinkingquality is the quality of inpidual thinking, and the occurrence and development ofeach inpidual’s thinking has significant differences (p.21). Thinking qualityembodies the difference between the level and ability of inpidual thinking. InEnglish subject, thinking quality is involved in English key competencies and isdefined in the National English Curriculum Standards(2017) as “the thinking abilityand thinking level in the aspects of logic, critique and innovation. Thinking qualityembodies the mental characteristics of the core competencies in the English subject.The development of thinking quality helps to improve the abilities of students toanalyze and solve problems, so that they can observe and recognize the world from across-cultural perspective and make the correct value judgment for things”(p.5). Thegoal of developing thinking quality is that students can distinguish the particular senseof specific phenomena in different language and culture. Students’ abilities of sortingout, summarizing information and constructing new concepts are also the target ofthinking ability. Students also are required to have the ability of analyzing andinferring the logic relationship of the information, judging various ideological pointscorrectly and expressing their own opinions creatively. That means students need tohave the ability to use English to think independently and innovatively.

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Chapter Three Methodology............................... 27
3.1 Research Questions....................... 27
3.2 Participants................................................27
Chapter Four Results and Discussion........................ 32
4.1 Results and Discussion of Classroom Observation.........................................32
4.1.1 Numbers and Percentage of Questions Asked by Teachers.................. 32
4.1.2 Differences of teachers’ questioning to students of different levels..... 50

Chapter FiveConclusion

5.1 Major Findings
During the questioning process in English reading classes, most English readingclasses cover all three kinds of questions. They are display questions, referentialquestions and evaluative questions. That means questions of low order thinking andhigh order thinking all appeared and students’ thinking qualities are cultivatedbasically in an order from lower level to higher one. In all classes, display questionsare most frequent, so the abilities of surface understanding and short-term memory aremost commonly developed. Then are referential questions. Referential questionsfocus on the application of text information and can develop a slightly higher level ofstudents’ thinking qualities. Evaluative questions are least asked in classes. There iseven no evaluative questions in Teacher 3’s classes. In all classes, the three kinds ofquestions asked by teachers are not in a appropriate proportion. Teachers ask toomany display questions and too few evaluative questions. It implies that students’higher-level thinking quality is not well developed, which may result in students’ lackof the ability to think independently and innovatively.
Teacher 1 asked most questions in both classes. She prefers to start the class andguide students into the topic by asking questions. Although Teacher 1 only asked oneevaluative question in both classes, many valuable outputs are given out by students.Teacher 1 is good at guiding students to think deeper and deeper by questions. Theycan speak out their own ideas and judgement innovatively about the topic. In this way,students’ thinking qualities are cultivated by a set of questions which are welldesigned. Compared with other two teachers’ classes, Teacher 2’s classes have noapparent characteristics. Teacher 3 asked the fewest questions in classes. The teacherhas to pay much attention to the students’ discipline. Due to the actual situation ofstudents’ language competence, Teacher 3 need to put much attention on basiclanguage points, such as crucial words, phrases and sentences. As far as the level ofthinking is concerned, Teacher 3 focuses on the acquisition of factual information inthe text, which is a shallow understanding of the text. The novice teacher ignores thecultivation of some higher-level thinking quality in her questioning to some extent,such as complexity or creativity.
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