English reading class is the main course for senior high school students to get language knowledge, strengthen English skills, train communicative abilities and to understand the cultural background knowledge of English-speaking countries。 Teacher questioning, as an important teaching strategies, is also a teaching method used frequently in English reading class。 The quality of teacher questioning directly determines the success or failure of the reading class,and the effectiveness of the interaction between teachers and students 。论文网

However, the studies about the teaching questioning in China still have some problems and deficiencies。 In view of this, this research confines teacher questioning to the English reading class and trying to change the previous ways from the perspective of the teacher into a further discussion from the perspective of students and teachers。 This research aims to find out the teachers’ and students’ understanding, puzzles, and expectations of teaching questioning so as to provide a solid foundation for finding better questioning strategies on how to employ teacher questioning in English reading class。 Classroom observation and interviews are adopted to study teacher questioning in reading classes in order to find out the current problems and deficiencies existing in the teacher questioning and put forward effective suggestions to improve the teaching quality of senior high school English reading classes。

This research mainly consists of six chapters。 Chapter one provides a general introduction of this research, including research background, research significance as well as the structure of this research。 Chapter two is about some related definitions and relevant researches abroad and at home of teacher questioning。 Chapter three is the methodology which be used to study the status quo of teacher questioning。 Chapter four is about problems and deficiencies in teacher questioning。 Chapter five is about methods of optimizing teacher questioning, which shows several effective suggestions。 Chapter six is the conclusion of the thesis。 In this chapter, major findings of the research are introduced。 Besides, the limitations of the study and recommendations for further study are also illustrated。 

2。 Literature review

In this chapter, it will first have a brief review of some basic theories about teacher questioning, especially its definitions, classifications, functions and strategies。 Then it will discuss some previous studies on teacher questioning both at home and abroad．

2。1 Definitions

According to the various literatures, reading teaching can be referred to as a process of mutual comprehension between teachers and students。 That is to say, teachers rely on the reading materials to comprehend the ideas of the authors with students。 By reading process, students can not only get language knowledge through reading materials, such as pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, but deeper understanding of the text for background knowledge。 

American teaching experts Stryn C Calhan said: “Asking questions is the basic control means to promote the students’ thinking, evaluate the teaching effect and promote the students to achieve the desired objectives”。 Teacher questioning refers to the teacher setting a series of problem situation according to a certain teaching objective and teaching content。 It should be pided into two parts, the teacher's questions to the students and the student's questions to the teacher in class time。

2。2 Previous studies of teacher questioning文献综述

There are many different classifications of teacher questioning from different angles by different scholars and researchers。 

According to Bloom, there are six cognitive categories: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation。 The six categories form a hierarchy from simple to advanced。 Different questions at each level require the students to use different kinds of thinking processing to get the appropriate answers。 Based on Bloom’s classification, some scholars classify these six levels into two kinds of questions: the first three kinds of questions (knowledge questions, comprehension questions and application questions) are regarded as lower-level questions and the rest three (analysis questions, synthesis questions and evaluation questions) are higher-level questions (Gall 707)。 Much research shows that 80 percent of all questions are low-level questions in English classes。 English teachers should balance the two kinds of questions，and make full use of them to help students get great achievement (Belka-Grzybek 40)。