Abstract

In the light of the New Curriculum Standard, teachers are supposed to pay attention to cultivating students’ emotional attitude in the teaching process, which should be considered on an equal basis with language knowledge, language skills, learning strategies, and culture awareness. One of the most essential factors of emotional attitude is learning motivation. Therefore, if teachers want to improve students’ English learning ability, they must inspire and develop students’ learning motivation. Additionally, classroom questioning is a main component in the teaching process as it can initiate and sustain the classroom interaction. So classroom questioning is one of the essential methods to inspire and cultivate students’ learning motivation. Therefore, it is of tremendous significance to investigate the promotion of classroom questioning on the students’ learning motivation. 

 Based on the theories of classroom questioning and learning motivation, the research was conducted by classroom observation of the video-recording the the demonstration class from Zhe Pai Ming Shi ( the teaching style from ZheJiang famous teachers). Then the author transcribed the video-recorded content into written materials for the analysis. The obtained data were classified into three aspects: types of questioning, questioning strategies and waiting time.

The main findings of this study are composed of: 1) Referential questions were more beneficial to stimulate students’ learning motivation than display questions. 2) Self-answering is ineffective while self-explaining, prompting, probing and redirecting is helpful in activating student’s learning motivation. 3) After questioning, adequate waiting time, especially more than eight seconds is able to promotion students’ learning motivation.

As there is promotion of classroom questioning on the learning motivation among middle school students among middle school students, teachers are required to make great efforts to apply some suggestions and take some effective measures in English teaching. This can not only make students become interested and initiative in learning English, but promote them to facilitate their language learning. 

Keywords: classroom questioning; learning motivation; influence; middle school

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction-6

1.1 Background of the Study-6

1.1.1 Background of Classroom Questioning Study-6

1.1.2 Background of Motivation Study-6

1.2 Significance and Purpose of the Study-7

1.3 Overall Structure of the Thesis-8

2. Literature Review-9

2.1 Classroom Questioning-9

2.1.1 Definition of Questioning-9

2.1.2 Types of Classroom Questioning-9

2.1.3 Questioning Strategies-10

2.1.4 Waiting time-10

2.2 Learning Motivation-10

2.2.1 Definition of Learning Motivation-10

2.2.2 Types of motivation-11

2.2.3 Previous Studies of Learning Motivation-12

2.3 Previous Study of the Influence of Classroom Questioning on Learning Motivation-13

3. Methodology and Design-14

3.1 Research Questions-14

3.2 Participants-14

3.3 Instruments-14

3.4 Data Collection-14

4. Results and Discussion-16

4.1 Types of Classroom Questioning-16

4.2 Questioning Strategies-19

4.3 Waiting Time-22

5. Conclusions-25

5.1 Findings-25

5.2 Implications-25

5.2.1 Skills of Designing Questions-25

5.2.2 Skills of Modifying Questions-25

5.2.3 Increasing Waiting time-26

5.3 Limitations-26

References-27