1.2 Research questions 

    This thesis, through video observation, attempts to analyze the differences between pre-service teacher and experienced teacher’ questioning styles to find out some critical information about typical problems of questioning existing in current EFL classrooms, and tries to give some suggestions on questioning strategies for the pre-service teachers. Three questions are designed for the research: 

Research question 1: 

    What are the differences between pre-service teachers and experienced teachers’ questioning styles in EFL classes of junior middle school?

Research question 2:

    What are the problems of questioning skills existing in pre-service teachers?

The focus of this research is to find the typical problems of questioning skill existing in pre-service teachers and put forward some suggestions on effective questioning strategies for them by drawing the merits of the experienced teachers.

1.3 Organization of the Thesis

The thesis consists of seven chapters. Chapter one introduces the background and significance of the research. Chapter two reviews the relevant literature at home and abroad. Chapter three explains the theories related to the research and the definition, classification and functions of questioning and the characteristics and the criteria of effective questioning. Chapter four describes the present research specifically, including the subjects involved and the instrument conducted and the process of research. Chapter five is concerned with the results and data analysis. Chapter six discusses the strategies for effective questioning and the application of effective questioning in junior middle school classes. Chapter seven is the conclusion of the research, which presents the major findings and limits of the research and gives some suggestions for the pre-service teacher. 

2. Literature Review

2.1 Related study abroad 

As classroom questioning plays a vital role, a great number of researchers oversea and at home have conducted numerous researches into this issue. 

In ancient Greek, the famous educator Socrates (469–399 B.C.E.) proposed a great teaching method: the Socratic Method. It is a form of inquiry and discussion between inpiduals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas. It is a dialectical method, often involving a discussion in which the defense of one point of view is questioned; one participant may lead another to contradict themself in some way, thus strengthening the inquirer's own point. In 1912, American professor Stevens conducted a systematic research and found out that the number of questions a teacher asked in class is extremely huge: 395 questions per day on average. And the 66% were low-level questions that were to ask students to remember the old knowledge. Five years later, Freud Sigmund found that 75% of the questions teachers asked were low-level questions aiming at requiring students to recall the specific information. In 1970, Flanders showed from his research that two thirds of the questions teachers asked were facts-oriented and emphasized on memorization. The educator Kozak had ever observed second and fourth grade classes in primary school and made a series of analysis on the classroom questioning based on the voice record. And the analysis showed that 70.1% of the questions paid attention on the literal understanding, yet the reasoning questions and evaluation questions respectively occupied only 13.7% and 18.3%. (Gao Yan, Wang Tan, 1995:27). Low-level questions occur most when teachers intend to check students’ comprehension of the text such as “who is the woman?” “ What’s her name?” “ when and where was she born?” etc. Such questions require not thinking but just read the text, which are rarely helpful for students to develop their critical thinking ability.