Many scholars home and abroad have taken all kinds of means to do theoretical and practical researches about in-class questioning. Bloom designed the famous six levels of cognition found in questions in his seminal work “Taxonomy of Educational Objectives” (1956), which are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Wilen also made great contribution to in-class questioning. In his book “Questioning Skills for Teachers-What Research Says to the Teacher”(1982), he examined teacher questioning practices and how these practices effect students’ achievement, thinking ability and motivation. Hunkins published his book “ Teaching Thinking Through Effective Questioning (Second Edition)” (1995), he not only gives guidelines for teachers to question, but also recognize students’ questioning as an important related area. Besides, there are other scholars such as L.H Clark and I.S.Starr, William Wile, Margaret Ishler and Richard Kinswatter, who summarized the function of classroom questioning. They all believed that questioning was the most effective way to make students think creatively. Questioning can achieve a wider teaching objective; questioning can promote students to reach their own school targets; questioning can assist students to join in the class activity actively; questioning can stimulate students to think and put forward a better question. (Margret & Richard, 2000:180-181) As for the domestic scholars, Jin Chuanbao(1997), Wang Yinquan(2000) and Wang Duqin(2002) did a lot to introduce the theory of in-class questioning into China. The main method used by Chinese experts to research on in-class questioning is observing and analyzing classes. One of the most famous studies was conducted by the Beijing Normal University research group which was led by Wang Qiang(2001) and He Anping(2003) The research analyzed the types of in-class questions, the students’ response, the teachers’ feedback through the videotape recorded in a teaching competition, which gave us some inspiration in English teaching in China.

1.3 The Purpose and Significance 

As a crucial part of classroom teaching, the in-class questioning has been a spotlight in the education research area. But different researchers have different research perspective and they study questioning from different angles. For example, some focus on the essence and strategies of the questioning, and some research its impact on students’ oral production.  The purpose of this study is to examine the relations between teachers’ in-class questioning in English class and the students’ learning interest. The effectiveness of questioning is analyzed, as a result, it can provide suggestions for improving teaching efficiency, equip English teachers with a high professional quality as well as arouse students’ positivity in the class and their learning interest.