英語教學中提問的藝術與技巧

【摘 要】提高教學效果是教學所追求的目標之一，目前越來越多的學者發現課堂提問有效與否極大地影響著教學效果，有些學者甚至認為有效的課堂提問是有效教學的核心。本文針對英語教學中提問的藝術與技巧做了相應的研究，并提出了一些課堂提問的技巧。

【關鍵詞】問題的難度；問題的效度；提問的技巧

Influenced by communicative approach of teaching， educators and teachers came to realize that the aim of language teaching is to cultivate students’ ability of using a foreign language to communicate. How to foster students’ output of language is to some extent dependent on the quality of teachers’ questioning. Effective questioning promotes the output of language. This paper just simply discusses the problem of how to question effectively in English classes. In the first place， some important concepts on this topic should be introduced.

1. Basic Ideas about Questions

1） Types of Questions

In 1983， Long and Sato divided questions into two groups： display questions and referential questions. The former refers to the questions teachers ask when they already know the correct answers. The purpose of asking this kind of questions is to check whether the students have mastered what they have been taught. The later one is the sort of questions asked when teachers do not know the answers and want to let students discuss or find out the answers all by themselves.

2） Difficulty of Questions

How to judge whether a question is easy or difficult for students is another important problem teachers should handle. Pedagogy indicates a formula to measure the difficulty of questions： H=1-P/W. H represents the degree of difficulty， P the number of students who pass the exam or answer the question correctly， W the total number of students. H should be controlled within the range from 0.3 to 0.8， which would be good for the result of learning.

3） Effectiveness of Questions

What questions are effective？ Penny Ur （2000： 230） once brought forward six standards to deal with this problem： clarity， learning value， interest， availability （whether students are highly involved in answering questions）， extension （whether questions are extended in depth and width and whether they can be answered in several ways or from different angles）， and teacher reaction （whether students have the feeling of security while answering questions and whether students’ answers or responses are respected by teachers no matter whether they give the right answers or not）.

Besides the difficulty and effectiveness of questions which should be successfully controlled by teachers， they should also master some techniques of questioning.

2. Techniques of Questioning

1） Choice of Questions

a. choose proper and effective questions according to the ability of students， teaching objectives and students’ interest and needs

b. choose different types of questions

2） Timing to question

Here are some suggestions for reference only： teachers are supposed to

a. raise questions while encountering difficulties

b. raise questions in which students have interest

c. raise questions where is associated with students’ real lives

d. raise （interesting） questions when students feel tired or bored

3） Order of questions

In terms of types of questions and course of teaching， teachers should raise some referential questions concerning the textbook to arouse students’ interest and curiosity at the beginning of the class； during the process of text learning， put forward some display questions to explain the difficult language points in the text； near the end of the class， present some other relatively difficult referential questions for students to discuss in class or think over after class； at the end of the class， give some conclusive questions to make a conclusion in order to make students have a thorough understanding of the whole text.

4） Quantity of questions

How many questions would be tolerable in a period of teaching？ The simplest way to judge is to observe students’ reaction. Their expression or emotion showing in their eyes， their motions etc all give teachers some clues to judge whether they are still eager to participate in answering questions. If so， teachers can raise more questions； if not， teachers should stop questioning.

5） Question Modification

If students still have no ideas on how to answer the questions asked by teachers， what should teachers do then？ The answer is to modify questions. Teacher question modification is classified by Chaudron （1988： 54-8） into different types： repetition， paraphrase， narrowing， decomposition （split the original question into several parts）， ect.

6） Feedback

The most frequently used classification of feedback is that of positive feedback and negative feedback. Positive feedback refers to teacher’s approval or acceptance of students’ production； negative feedback （also called corrective feedback） refers to error correction or criticism. Simple positive feedback， such as “Yes！”， “Right！”， “Good！”， “Well done！”， can not meet students’ requirements. Students prefer “praise followed by appraisal”， which equals to a simple praise plus an appropriate assessment. While negative feedback enables students to realize their present ability of target language production， which also has an effect on the language improvement. However， improper negative feedback would cause the appearance of negative feeling about the language learning. Therefore teachers should use negative feedback in a supportive and warm way.

3. Conclusion

Teachers’ questioning is an art， which needs more researchers’ efforts. Only a small group of techniques of questioning is introduced in this paper， from which we have a general idea on what to do and how to do during each step of questioning.

【Bibliography】

[1]Allwright， D Bailey， K. M. Focus on the Language Classroom： An Introduction to Classroom Research for Language Teachers [M].New York： Cambridge University Press， 1991.

[2]Chaudron， C. Second Language Classrooms： Research on Teaching and Learning [M].Cambridge University Press，1988.

[3]金傳寶.美國關于教師提問技巧的研究綜述[J] .課程.教材.教法，1997（2）：54.

[4]王丹.大學英語精讀課堂教師有效提問研究[D].吉林大學，2009.