小学英语课堂教学中的提问策略

摘 要

　　杰出的物理学家爱因斯坦曾经说过：“提出一个问题往往比解决一个问题更重要。”在当代的英语教学中，课堂提问更是被视为一门艺术，它是课堂教学的重要组成部分。课堂提问也是帮助教师提高教学质量的重要手段之一，它可以检查和检验教师教学效果和学生的学习状况。恰当的提问策略和提问内容可以帮助学生巩固所学内容和提高学习兴趣。然而在当今的小学英语课堂教学中却忽视了提问策略对于学生主动听，大胆说的能力的训练及培养。本论文将针对小学学生，从提问目的的明确性、良好问题的设计、掌握问题的技巧三方面来探讨英语课堂教学中的提问策略。通过教学实践的方式来揭示需要有计划性、针对性和启发性地来提出问题，目的是能提高学生的学习积极性，激发学生的学习兴趣和学生主动参与的欲望，从而开展思考、讨论，探究活动。这项研究对于帮助教师完成教学任务，达到教学目的，让学生真正体验到英语课堂教学的艺术有长远的意义。

　　关键词：课堂教学；提问策略；小学；课堂艺术

Questioning Strategy of English Classroom Teaching in Primary Schools

ABSTRACT

　　The outstanding physical scientist Einstein once said that it was more significant to putforward a question than to solve a question. In the present English teaching activities, classroomquestioning is more or less regarded as a field of art, and it's an indispensable part in classroomteaching. Classroom questioning is also an important way of helping teachers improve theirteaching qualities, since it can testify the effects of teachers' teaching and the conditions ofstudents' study. Both proper questioning strategies and questioning contents can help studentsconsolidate what they've learned and cultivate their interests in study. However, the presentprimary school English classroom teaching usually ignores the practice of cultivating students'active listening skills and fearless speaking skills by questioning strategies. This paper willdiscuss the questioning strategies of English classroom teaching in primary schools from thesethree aspects: the definitude of questioning purpose, the design of proper questions and the skillof mastering questions. These aspects of questioning strategies will be tested through theteaching practice to show it's necessary to raise questions with plans, targets and enlightenments,which aims at striving students to study actively, motivating their interests and desires on study.This study has promising implications for helping teachers to accomplish their teaching tasks andmaking students experience the real art atmosphere of English classroom teaching.

　　Key words: classroom teaching; questioning strategy; primary school; classroom art

TABLE OF CONTENTS

　　摘 要
　　ABSTRACT
　　Chapter One Introduction
　　Chapter Two Question and Questioning
　　2.1 Question
　　2.1.1 Definition of question
　　2.1.2 Types of questions
　　2.2 Definition of questioning
　　2.3 Principles of Questioning
　　2.3.1 Subjectivity
　　2.3.2 Relaxing
　　2.3.3 Openness
　　2.3.4 Discrepancy
　　2.3.5 Rigorous
　　2.4 Techniques of questioning
　　2.4.1 Prompt
　　2.4.2 Rephrasing
　　2.4.3 Supplementarity
　　2.4.4 Encouragement
　　Chapter Three Designs of Questions
　　3.1 Direction
　　3.2 Evolutionarity
　　3.3 Exploration
　　3.4 Sublimation
　　Chapter Four Questioning Strategies
　　4.1 Questioning strategies for classroom teaching
　　4.1.1 Pre-class
　　4.1.2 Revision
　　4.1.3 Presentation
　　4.1.4 Consolidation and practice
　　4.1.5 Summary
　　4.2 Questioning strategies for different purposes
　　4.2.1 To guide into a new lesson
　　4.2.2 To make a transition
　　4.2.3 To tackle difficulties
　　4.3 Tips for questioning strategies
　　4.3.1 Frequency of questioning
　　4.3.2 Waiting time for questioning
　　4.3.3 Correction for errors
　　4.3.4 Methods for feedback
　　Chapter Five Conclusion
　　REFERENCES

　　Chapter One Introduction

　　English classroom questioning is one major way of heuristic mode of teaching; it is also anecessary link of enlightening students' thinking and improving classroom-teaching qualities. Atpresent, classroom questioning is more or less regarded as a field of art, and it's an indispensablepart in classroom teaching. To English teaching of primary schools, questioning is important tomotivate students' autonomic learning as well as arouse their interests. However, the presentEnglish teachers of primary school usually ignore the skills of questioning strategies, whichmakes the original spry classroom overshadow. Also, many researches show that the average rateof the effective questioning in an English class is only 54 %( Jeffson, 2010:83). Therefore, it isnecessary for teachers to adopt proper questioning strategies to ensure the effectives both forcourse and students. In order to improve learning environment, and arouse interests of students,both the West and China pay great attention to teacher's classroom questioning strategies.

　　In the early fifteenth century, the famous Greek scholar Plutarch found that brain is not justa container which needs to be filled; however, it is a handful of torch which needs to be lit up(1468: 43-45). And yet, the effective questioning strategy is the single spark, which can lit up thetorch. The world-wide famous physical scientist Einstein once found that it was more ofsignificance to put forward a question than to solve a question (1940: 22). In the late twentiethcentury, Belarck conducted a great research, which shows that the core of classroom teaching isteacher's questioning (1979: 66). During this period of time, Samson and Strykowski (1982: 125-134), two American philosophers, also obtained the similar results in studies. In China, QianXueseng and other educationists(2000: 65-67) found that there were countless inventions, but thestarting point of all those inventions was a question.

　　Therefore, this paper attempts to discuss the questioning strategies of English classroomteaching in primary schools. First, this paper introduces questions and question designs, whichincludes the classifications of questions, the principles of questioning and some matters ofquestion designs. Then, based on the foundation of the previous chapter, the whole papersuccessively discusses English classroom questioning strategy of primary schools, includingquestioning before class, during class and after class. It also sets a number of examples to showthat only by raising questions with plans, targets and enlightenments can help teachers toaccomplish their teaching tasks and make students experience the real art atmosphere of Englishclassroom teaching.

　　Chapter Two Question and Questioning

　　2.1 Question

　　2.1.1 Definition of question

　　Question is a way of improving understanding (1938:43). Refers to Einstein (1942:34),question is a kind of instruction to help people acquire knowledge.

　　Literally, questions refer to a sentence, phrase or word that asks for information. But, in thispaper, question refers to a kind of tool to arouse students' interest, help teachers teach and makesure whether their students have understood the contents of classroom teaching thoroughly or not.

　　2.1.2 Types of questions

　　There are four basic types of questions in the classroom teaching: discriminant questions;descriptive questions; exploratory questions; divergent questions. (Penny, 2005: 92-95).

　　First, discriminant questions. This kind of questions is mainly used to make judgements onthings. Its representative words are: " Is it right?" ; " Is it true?" ; " Can you? " ; " Will you? " andso on.

　　Second, descriptive questions. This kind of questions is mainly used to state or explainobjective things. Its representative words are: “What is it?”; “How is it?”; “How does it looklike?" and so on.

　　Third, exploratory questions. This kind of questions is mainly used to illuminate genesicreasons, regular patterns of things and their internal relations. Its representative words are:　"Why?”; “What can you discover from it?"; “What do you think of it?”; "Can you say somethingabout it?”; " Do you agree with the author? Why?" and so on.

　　Then, divergent questions. This kind of questions is mainly used to make students becognizant of objective things from different angles, aspects and fields. Its representative wordsare:"what did you learn from it?”; "Say something about your own understanding or opinions.";"Can you share your opinion with us?”;" Can you add something in detail?" and so on.

　　2.2 Definition of questioning

　　Questioning is a universally used activation technique in teaching, mainly within theInitiation-Response-Feedback pattern; Initiation-Response-Feedback means that teacher initiatesan exchange, usually in the form of a question, one of the students answers, the teacher givesfeedback (assessment, correction, comment), initiates the next question and so on ( Sinclair andCoulthard, 1975:227-228).

　　In this paper, questioning refers to an excellent aid that can serve a lesson well, and thesuccess of students in answering the question is more often determined by the teacher'squestioning strategies.

　　2.3 Principles of Questioning

　　Following are the five main principles of questioning used in the English classroomteaching of primary schools.

　　2.3.1 Subjectivity

　　The main part of classroom teaching is students, and teachers are in a dominate position.

　　Therefore, when teachers ask questions, they must fully stimulate students' enthusiasm, initiativeand participation to answer questions. Teachers cannot always ask the few excellent students toanswer questions. When questioning, teachers need to pay attention to enlighten and encouragestudents to find answers independently, rather than tell answers to students.

　　For example, when teachers asking questions, they should ask the question to the wholeclass. It means that teachers should say “Class, does my question make sense to all of you?";“Can anyone make a try?"; “Who can have a try?" and so on. In this part, teachers should avoidasking questions to the fixed students.

　　2.3.2 Relaxing

　　Different students have different psychological qualities and characteristics. Some of themare extroverted, who is willing to project himself/herself, on the contrary, some of them areinturned, who is afraid to make mistakes. Thus, in order to make all the students take active partin the classroom teaching, teachers should maintain a relaxing environment and createdemocratic atmosphere. Only in this way can reduce students' mental pressure and let them speakout freely.

　　That means teachers should encourage students to ask questions, and when students makemistakes, teachers should tell them" that's OK, please go on" to let students not be afraid ofmaking mistakes.

　　2.3.3 Openness

　　Classroom questioning should encourage every student to set forth his own view. Thecorrect answers can be one or more. Different views should be encouraged especially, thenteacher can arrange the students (those who have different views) to have a debate. Studentsshould be praised if only they can "make their own story sound plausible".

　　For example, the answers to the teacher's questions should not have only one answer. Thequestion itself should be open, arousing students' awareness.

　　2.3.4 Discrepancy

　　Students in the same class have a wide difference on knowledge and ability level (Deng,2008: 99). Therefore, when teachers raise questions, they should modify their ways of teachingto suit the special requirements of their own students.

　　That means teachers should design different questions to different students because of theirdifferent ability levels.

　　2.3.5 Rigorous

　　Here the rigorous principle refers to the rigorous principle of logic of language. First, itmeans that questioning language should be unambiguous so that students can understand thequestion. Second, it means that language should be luminous so that students will be stimulatedto think about the question actively. Third, the logic should be rigorous, in other words, it canstand close scrutiny.

　　2.4 Techniques of questioning

　　When students have troubles in answering the questions teacher raised, teacher should helpand instruct them to find the correct answers. Then they can use the following techniques forquestioning strategies.

　　2.4.1 Prompt

　　Sometimes students couldn't be able to answer the questions, so teacher can give furtherprompting messages to help them find a complete answer. When students fail to answer anyquestion, ask them the following:

　　Is the question clear to you?

　　Do you want me to rephrase the question?

　　Which part of the question did you not understand?

　　Is the question too difficult to you?

　　2.4.2 Rephrasing

　　If students fail to understand teacher's questions, the proper strategy for teachers isrephrasing. Teachers couldn't blame students for misunderstanding questions. Sometimes, thereasons for students failing to answer the questions are because they don't understand thequestions completely. Thus, teachers can rephrase their questions in various forms. For example,when teachers say" Can you elaborate your answers?" If students have no response, teachershould change his/her question immediately such as “Can you say something about it?".

　　2.4.3 Supplementarity

　　In the class, teachers always use questioning to check students' comprehension of thislesson, and we call this kind of questions “inspective question". Inspective questions are alwaysused to check whether students understand the words, phrases and sentence or not, so theanswers don't need to be long in length (Li Ping, 2003: 48-49).

　　And, there is another kind of questions, which requires students answer as much as possible.

　　When teachers want students say more about answers, they can try to questioningextensively so that students can have more thinking. For example, teachers can ask" What doyou usually do in the evening?" instead of “Do you usually do your homework in the evening?"2.4.4 Encouragement

　　Students are always unwilling to answer questions when they are not sure about theiranswers; this is because they lack the self-confidence of solving problems. At that time, the besteffective medicine is teacher's encouragement. Teacher can encourage them to predict answersby guessing or assumpting fearlessly.

　　To encourage students to open their mouths, teachers could say“Can you have a try?”: “Don't be shy, have a try” and so on.

　　Chapter Three Designs of Questions

　　When designing questions of English classroom teaching, there are four main guidelineslike direction, evolutionarity, exploration and sublimation for teachers to follow. In this part, thefour main guidelines will be introduced in detail.

　　3.1 Direction

　　The questions, which a teacher designs to arouse in the classroom teaching, must be keptclosely to the Instructional Objectives, and it means making the instructional objectives asquestions (Tao Xingzhi, 1935: 183). Thus, here, the direction refers to that questions teachersdesigned should be based on the instructional objectives. Questions designed for the Englishclassroom teaching must be guided by the instructional objectives; moreover, teachers also needto sink deep into the English teaching materials of primary school, which will help teachers usethe teaching materials creatively and flexibly. Designs of questions is an important and necessarypart for teachers to prepare lessons, when teachers are preparing lessons, they not only need toprepare for the teaching materials but also need to prepare for the students. In this respect,teachers should be familiar with students' interests and doubtful points. Only in this way cansuccessfully make the students grasp the teaching contents and key points of the lesson.

　　3.2 Evolutionarity

　　All kinds of education activities should abide by the students' law of somatopsychicdevelopment (Shen Feng, 2010: 23). And, that is the most important thing for teachers to takeinto account. Thus, when teachers are designing questions, they also need to pay attention tostudents' present knowledge and capacities. Questions should be designed from easy to difficult,specific to abstract and from perceptual to rational, which can increase students' understandinggradually. According to some researches, lacking of vocabularies is really a serious problem forthe students of primary schools, which even more determines teacher to make a balance betweenstudents' present capacities and the questions they design. That's the way to keep students'interests and develop their self-confidence.

　　3.3 Exploration

　　Designing exploratory questions requires the teachers to base on the characteristics ofteaching materials. By asking enlightening questions, it can be able to guide students to thinkactively, cultivate the ability to analyze and solve problems. The questions teachers designedshould be closely related to students' life as much as possible, which can guide students toexplore, deep into questions and understand the aim that learning is for practicing.

　　For example, when teaching 6A Unit 6 We're going on a spring field trip, teachers candesign questions as "Do you know the place of interest in Changshu?”;"What are they?"; "Wheredo you prefer to go on a spring field trip?"In this way, questions broad the topic about spring field trip of texts to the tourist resourcesof their hometown, and these questions also make students promote their hometown to others.

　　3.4 Sublimation

　　Designed questions should be brought up to spiritual level (Penny, 2002: 114). During theprocess of classroom teaching, teachers should fully tap the significance of ideological educationfrom teaching materials. With the help of well designed questions, it can be able to permeatemoral education into the results of question designs. Thus, ideological and moral education canbe conducted among students.

　　For example, when teaching 5A Unit 3 Saving the earth, teachers can design questions as"How to make our school stay clean?”; "How to solve the pollution problems in our hometown?”;"How protect our environment?”; "How to save the earth?" and so on. Thinking about thesequestions helps students develop their awareness of environmental protection. In daily life, asaying" Protecting the environment is everyone's responsibility" will always be in their minds.

　　Chapter Four Questioning Strategies

　　4.1 Questioning strategies for classroom teaching

　　4.1.1 Pre-class

　　Five minutes before the class begins, teachers can have a free talk with their students or befree to ask questions to students. That is an interaction of asking questions without restrictionbetween the teacher and students or between one student and another. This interaction is notlimited by specific teaching materials, and it doesn't need to borrow any other teaching aids (ShuDingfang, 2009: 34). Teachers only need to ask some questions, which are closely related tostudents' daily life, and they can also choose some interesting topics to let students discuss.

　　For example, teachers can use such sentence structures as "What day/date is it today? Whatis the weather like? How did you go to school today? When did you get up this morning?" to askstudents for practicing. In this way, both the classroom atmosphere and students become active,what's more, it ups their English level.

　　4.1.2 Revision

　　Questions that are based on the contents of the last lesson are cognitive anamnesticquestions (Li Ping, 2003: 47). In this period, questioning can help students output and reproducethe knowledge they've learned last class. By questioning and answering, students can consolidatewhat they've learn last class and also get ready for the new lesson.

　　4.1.3 Presentation

　　When guiding into a new lesson, teachers can use questioning to arouse students' desire forknowledge, on most occasions, they should be predictive questions (Tao Xingzhi, 1988: 102-103). Teachers can go on the lesson with the help of pictures, real objects, the Jan stroke,multimedia courseware and other teaching aids to display their questions, which are based on thecontents of the textbook.

　　Take the lesson "Let's be greener people" as an example, when teaching this lesson, at thepresentation period, teacher can use two pictures (one picture is a dustbin that is recycled,another one picture is a dustbin that is nonrecycled.) to start their questions one by one such as"(1) What are they?/ (2) What do the signs mean?/ (3) Do you know what the three Rs are?/ (4)Do you know what things can be recycled in your daily life? By answering question (1) andquestion (2), students can learn some new words in this lesson. Question (3) will arouse theirdesire for know what the 3R is, and question (4) requires students to find answers from theirdaily life. Isn't it a good way of guiding students into the new lesson; moreover, their answers arejust the key points of this lesson.

　　4.1.4 Consolidation and practice

　　In the period of consolidation and practice, teacher's main task is to ask students questions,which should be systematic and special pointed. In other words, these questions should be basedon the teaching contents or based on the language points of this lesson; moreover, the questionsalso should be interconnected. Teachers can questioning students with various ways like orallyor literally. By discussing and answering these questions, students can have a deeperunderstanding of this lesson.

　　For instance, the lesson Let's be greener people, in the consolidation and practice period,teacher can questioning the questions such as (1) Would you like to be a greener person? (2)Would you tell me something about recycling? (3) What kind of rubbish can be recycled/ reused/reduced? (4) What should we do as students to protect our environment? Question (1), question(2) and question (3) will help students learn more about how to deal with the rubbish correctly.

　　When questioning question (4), teacher can divide students into different groups, and let themdiscuss with each other, in order to get a deeper understanding of the lesson, and then transfer itinto our daily life. A successful class needs to make a bridge from textbooks to the real world(N.A Kaiipob, 1969: 43).

　　4.1.5 Summary

　　Summary is an indispensable teaching part of each lesson (Tao Xingzhi, 1936: 123). At thattime, teacher uses questions to help students recall what they have learned at this lesson, thenhelp them summarize the key points and some main difficulties in the lesson. This part can avoidteacher's single repeat, enabling students to grasp the profound and thorough contents.

　　Take the lesson Let's be greener people as an example. Teacher can make a summary bythe following questions :( 1) How many words and expressions did we learn this class? (2)Whatdoes "rather than" mean? Can you make a sentence with it? (3)What do the 3R mean? Can youtell its meaning to your desk mates? (4)Can you give me the ways of giving advice?

　　Question 1 and question 2 can helps students summarize the words and phrases which needto be read, spoken, said and written. Question3 makes an emphasis on this lesson of the textbook;question4 summarizes the grammar points of this lesson.

　　To cultivate students' ability to summarize knowledge systematically is the pursuit that allteachers are keeping after.

　　4.2 Questioning strategies for different purposes

　　4.2.1 To guide into a new lesson

　　Experienced teachers attach much importance to the artistic quality when guiding into anew lesson. They always use rhetoric questions to arise students' burning desire for newknowledge, making the effects as" a tossed stone raises a thousand ripples".

　　For example, when teaching 4A Unit6 Where are you now? Questioning is the best way toguide into the new lesson. To make a connection with this new lesson, teacher can designquestions as following:

　　(Point at two pictures of the last unit)

　　Where is the boy? He is under the tree.

　　Where is the rabbit? It is behind the tree.

　　What do you see under the tree? There is a flower under the tree.

　　To extract the question sentence from students' answers: Is there a flower under the tree?

　　Then instruct students to answer: Yes, there is.

　　(Teacher points at the object)

　　Is there a robber behind the tree?

　　Students answer: Yes, there is.

　　All these are prepared for the new contents, making a natural leading-in:Is there a TV in the room?

　　To make a leading-in by revision is an appropriate way for primary school students, for it isin accordance with pupils' age and mental characteristics. Moreover, it's also in accordance withthe principles that questioning should be from easy to difficult, from known to unknown andstepwise.

　　By questioning like this can enlighten pupils' thinking and motivate them to search foranswers actively. More important, make a proper combination between former knowledge andnew knowledge is in favor of removing obstacles for the new language points, creating a newenvironment for it.

　　4.2.2 To make a transition

　　Germany educationist Herbat (1990: 27) once said" If teacher's questioning can intricatestudents' attention, then the teacher will be able to make students wait, explore and actcontinuously at each stage." Such class can be carried out effectively, increasing students'

　　efficiency directly. When teaching, teacher needs to join one point with another one pointnaturally, otherwise, students will feel confused, and even can't keep up with the teacher.

　　Therefore, in the classroom teaching, teacher should pay attention to the transition of contexts,developing students' multiaspect thinking model. To put it simply, to make students explore andcreate by making full use of the knowledge that they've already known (Samson, 1992:68).

　　For example, after finishing teaching the new words: father, mother, elder brother, eldersister, photo,family,of 3A Unit1 My family, teacher needs to make a transition from words tosentences. Thus, teachers can design the following questions to help them make a transition.

　　Who is the man in the photo? / What does he do?

　　Who is the woman in the photo? / What does she do?

　　To answer these two questions will use the words that they've learn in this unit, and it alsowill guide into the new sentence structure: he is taking photos. Thus, it makes a natural transition,not making students feel confused.

　　4.2.3 To tackle difficulties

　　The main tasks for preparing lessons are fixing the teaching focal points and searching forthe teaching difficulties. That requires teacher to design relevant teaching activities and chooseproper teaching methods. During the process of English teaching in the primary school, theuniversal existing difficulties are happened in the aspect of phonetic, intonation, grammar andsentence structures. To reduce the teaching difficulties, teachers should take different measuresto tackle difficulties, meanwhile, the most effective and staple way is using questioningstrategies (Shen Feng, 2010: 23-25).

　　The focal point of Unit7 3A Is that my schoolbag? is the interrogative sentence structure” Isthat...?", but its difficulty is that students not only need to understand its meaning and grasp itsusage, but also need to speak this interrogative sentence by rising their tone. It's really very hardfor pupils, since their foundation of English is not so consolidated. In order to help them fromunderstanding to mastering, teachers can design following questions to tackle difficulties.

　　(Teacher points at the pictures, then guides into the interrogative sentence, and answers thequestion all himself/herself)

　　Is that a car? Yes, it is.

　　Is that a plane? No, it isn't.

　　(Then, teacher points at the real objects in the classroom, and raise questions)

　　Is that a pencil?

　　Teacher instructs students to answer: Yes, it is.

　　(First, let students percept the sentence structure and the tone, then ask them to read afterteacher to practice, at that time, teacher can provide some other words for students to choose)

　　Is that a bus/ a plane/ a car/ a train? (by rising your tones !)

　　By questioning and answering in that way can arouse pupils' interests and thinking, alsotackling the teaching difficulties step by step.

　　4.3 Tips for questioning strategies

　　4.3.1 Frequency of questioning

　　Frequency and contents of teacher's questioning reflect the frequency and contents of theinteraction between students and teachers; meanwhile, they also determine the rhythm ofclassroom teaching. According to the research conducted in 2004, it shows that the rhythm ofclassroom teaching is the most important part, which will affect classroom teaching. Whereas,under the external conditions of "non-native language teaching" and "big class teaching",students can't be able to concentrate themselves in the class. Therefore, holding the rhythm ofquestioning is especially important. Increasing the times of questioning properly is helpful forstudents to concentrate their attention.

　　4.3.2 Waiting time for questioning

　　After raising question to students, teachers should leave them proper time to think about it.

　　That's because in some junior English class, most of teacher's questions are so easy that do notrequire students to think carefully or organize their words, which makes teachers ignore thewaiting time. Although it could fasten the rhythm of teaching, at the same time, it doesn't helpstudents develop thinking abilities.

　　Researchers on questioning strategies speak of two kinds of wait-time: “wait-time one”

　　refers to the amount of time the teacher allows to elapse after he/she has posed a question andbefore a student begins to speak; and “wait-time two” refers to the amount of time a teacherwaits after a student has stopped speaking before saying anything.

　　In the real teaching practice, we can easily find that if the students are provided with amodest increase of wait-time, the more correct responses improves. Moreover, wait time benefitsteachers as well; wait-time makes their questioning strategies more effective.

　　4.3.3 Correction for errors

　　Chomsky once said that language errors couldn't be avoided in the foreign languagelearning, and how to treat and correct students' language errors is very significant for languageteaching. In the English teaching, teachers need to pay attention to both how to teach andstudents' how to learn. Learning a foreign language is like learning how to walk. Some errorswithout correction may influence students forever. Thus, in the English classroom teaching,teachers should adopt different ways of correcting errors; by instructing student correct errors allby himself/herself or asking classmates to help him/her.

　　Teachers are responsible for correcting mistakes and guiding the students in properdirection. These are delicate moments in teacher―student interactions and deserve to be dealtwith carefully. The teacher's dilemmas in these situations vary from inclination to favordiscovery learning in the form of continuing guided questioning to adopting a more humanestance by maintaining silence or responding in a neutral manner. With careful probing andguiding questions it may be possible to elicit the correct response, but there are risks of potentialembarrassment and eventual damage to the teacher―student relationship. Adopting a morehumane approach, although more compassionate and sympathetic, is unlikely to correct thestudents' wrong responses and is pedagogically in adequate. Ellis explored teachers' strategies ofcorrecting wrong answers during clinical encounters and identified four possible strategies todeal with incorrect responses (Ellis, 1995).

　　4.3.4 Methods for feedback

　　After student finish answering, teacher should give relevant evaluation and feedback. To thestudent whose answer is completely correct, teacher should immediately give him/herappreciation without any hesitation; however, to the student whose answer is not correct, teachershould point out his/her mistakes without hurting his/her self-esteem. In short, teacher's feedbackand evaluation should be respectful.

　　If the students' responses are right, the teachers should praise him/her. Acknowledge thattheir answers are worthwhile. Then encourage students to continue to answer questions or letthem sit down with “thank you”. Teacher should say “thank you” to students no matter theanswer is right or wrong. If a student answers incorrectly, you can say: “thanks any way” or“It's Ok. That was a difficult question.” However, if you said “Don't be stupid”, your commentscan be demotivating.

　　Chapter Five Conclusion

　　Classroom questioning is an effective tool for every teacher in class. If used properly, itwill be added to the teaching as a considerable force. In the daily teaching practice, the ask-answer mode plays an important role both in the present and in the past. Questioning serves asa necessary part in daily school education as well as in classroom teaching activitiesIt can not only help students consolidate knowledge, prompting feedback teaching informationtimely, but also it can encourage students to take active part in the classroom teaching, improvetheir thinking abilities, what's more, it sharpens students' oral expression abilities. Questioninghelps teachers to get know about their students, in order to teach students in accordance withtheir aptitude. Therefore, mastering the classroom questioning strategies is of great benefit to theclassroom teaching.

　　Above all, this paper contains tips, techniques and strategies of questioning in primaryschools, demonstrating the significance of questioning in the classroom teaching. Thus, it is verynecessary and vital for teachers to grasp questioning strategies. To question well is to teach well.

　　In the skillful use of questions, more than anything else lies in the fine art of teaching. Effectiveuse of questioning is a critical asset in every good teacher's toolbox.

　　Meanwhile, teachers' classroom questioning is also a kind of science. In general, "teaching andlearning methods are plentiful and changeable, the fitted is the best." So as the classroomquestioning, the key lies in the basis teaching reality, combining the teaching entity to designquestions. While asking questions, try best to instruct students. Only in this way can motivate thestudents, fully make the use of classroom questioning and to improve students' thinking andteaching qualities.

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