








































Education, Society and Human Studies 
ISSN 2690-3679 (Print) ISSN 2690-3687 (Online) 

Vol. 5, No. 1, 2024 
www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs 

6 

Original Paper 

A Study on Teachers’ Questioning Strategies for the Purpose of 

Improving Students’ Thinking Quality in Senior High School 

English Reading Teaching 
Wei Yiyi1* 

1 Department of Foreign Languages, Tai Yuan Normal University, Jinzhong, China 
* Wei Yiyi, Department of Foreign Languages, Tai Yuan Normal University, Jinzhong, China 

 

Received: December 24, 2023     Accepted: January 5, 2024      Online Published: January 15, 2024 

doi:10.22158/eshs.v5n1p6                         URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/eshs.v5n1p6 

 

Abstract 

Thinking quality is a key element in developing students’ creativity, critical thinking skills and critical 

thinking. In high school English teaching, questioning is an important means to develop students’ 

reading comprehension ability. However, the traditional way of teachers’ questioning is usually aimed 

at expressing the answers, neglecting the cultivation of thinking quality. The purpose of this paper is to 

explore the current situation and reasons of questioning in high school, and to explore the specific 

questioning strategies that can effectively train students’ thinking quality in high school English 

classes. 

Keywords 

quality of thinking, English reading classroom, questioning strategy 

 
1. Introduction 

The curriculum development objectives of English in the 2022 version of the English Curriculum 

Standard for General Senior Secondary Schools (referred to as the “new standard”) shift the focus of 

attention to the core qualities of students in the English subject, and incorporate the dimension of 

“quality of thinking” into the connotation of the core qualities of the English subject. The dimension of 

“quality of thinking” is included in the core quality of the English subject. Reading teaching is an 

important part of English teaching, and English reading class has an outstanding advantage in the 

cultivation of students’ thinking quality because of its rich cultural connotation of English education 

and language appreciation value. As an important skill in English reading teaching, questioning is an 

important factor affecting the efficiency of reading teaching and an important means of cultivating 



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students’ thinking quality. In high school English reading teaching, the reading text is full of 

information and dispersed, and the quality of teachers’ questioning determines the depth and breadth of 

students’ reading text and affects the development and expansion of students’ thinking. In this paper, 

from the current high school English reading classroom questioning in the many problems and the 

status quo, explores the effective classroom questioning strategy, aimed at asking questions to lead to 

thinking, to promote the cultivation of students’ thinking quality. 

 

2. The Current Situation of Questioning in High School English Classroom 

2.1 A Large Proportion of the Questions Were Low-level Questions 

Teachers in reading classrooms tend to refer to cognitive questions that focus on yes-or-no answers and 

close-ended questions that are easily found in textbooks and require little in-depth thinking. When it 

comes to open-ended and creative questions, given the limited time available, teachers may often 

provide students with hints, which can greatly affect students’ ability to think independently. The type 

of questioning tends to focus on words, vocabulary and sentence structure, with little textual 

understanding. 

2.2 Teachers Give Students Less Waiting Time 

Rowe (1986) divides the teacher’s waiting time for questions into two types; the first refers to the time 

between the teacher asking the question and the student giving the question. The length of time 

between answers, that is, post-question waiting time, which is the time given to students to think about 

the question, and the other kind of waiting time, which is the length of time between students’ answers 

to the question and the teacher’s or other classmates’ feedback, is also known as post-answer waiting 

time (i.e., the time for students to reconsider, expand, or revise their answers). The author found that 

most teachers want students to give answers immediately after they ask a question in order to give 

students more knowledge in the limited 45 minutes. When students are not able to answer immediately 

after a question is posed to them, the teacher will “quickly” direct the students to respond or call 

another student up to answer the question, rather than waiting for the student who is unable to answer 

the question immediately, which may not be understandable in the limited amount of time available. If 

this goes on for a long time, it is bound to dampen students’ motivation and their enthusiasm for 

answering questions, which is even more detrimental to the cultivation of students’ quality of thinking. 

2.3 Unequal Opportunities for Students to Answer Questions 

In the classroom observation, it is found that teachers tend to ask questions to more active students, so 

that other students have fewer opportunities to answer, their ability to answer questions and critical 

thinking is greatly affected, and they will only get worse and worse, forming a vicious circle: good 

students get better and better, poor students get worse and worse, students don’t like teachers, and the 

class discipline will not be good. Students’ academic performance will not be good, which will also 

affect the enthusiasm of teachers and students in class. 



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3. Reasons for Inappropriate Use of Questioning Strategies in English Classroom 

3.1 Over-emphasis on Language Teaching 

On the one hand, in the background of exam-oriented education, many teachers in the process of 

teaching the phenomenon of only talking about the content of the test, not the irrelevant test content, 

the knowledge of the test focuses on vocabulary, words, grammar of the content and the content of the 

test, and involves creative questions, critical questions and other questions to cultivate the students’ 

creative thinking, critical thinking, logical thinking is less. According to the results of classroom 

observation and students’ questionnaires, teachers ask a large proportion of demonstrative questions, 

accounting for 85 percent, and referential questions account for 15 percent. On the other hand, teachers 

want to instill enough knowledge into their students in the limited 45 minutes, so if they do not have 

the patience to guide their students, then the quality of students’ thinking will not be developed. 

3.2 Underestimating Students’ Ability to “Learn” 

In the process of lesson preparation, many teachers take themselves the leading role, students under the 

leadership of the teacher to review vocabulary, grammar and other basic knowledge, consolidate the 

foundation of the main teaching objectives, but do not go tap the students’ inner learning energy to 

stimulate students to think, and did not focus on the promotion of the development of the quality of 

thinking of the students. The root of the problem is the underestimation of students’ ability to “learn” 

and answer questions, and the failure to cultivate students’ ability in this area at the beginning of the 

process has resulted in the development of students’ quality of thinking lagging far behind the 

development of their language skills in the second and third years of high school. 

3.3 Teachers Lack Systematic Training in Professional Development and Quality of Thinking 

Teachers’ professional development refers to the process by which teachers, under the guidance of the 

concept of lifelong learning and continuous development, achieve an all-round improvement of their 

professional concepts, professional knowledge and abilities by reasonably planning their own 

professional development goals and mastering the knowledge and skills of teachers’ professional 

development with the help of diversified learning paths. Teachers spend a lot of time and energy on 

their teaching work, and their free time is only available during the summer and winter holidays, so 

they receive training during the summer and winter holidays. In this case, teachers’ professional 

training is postponed, which ultimately hurts their development. Training on the implementation of 

thinking quality accounts for a low percentage of all training, and most of the training are given to 

young teachers, and the group of old teachers seldom receives training on the quality of thinking in 

English and efficient classroom questioning strategies. Teachers, in order to seek, have carried out 

self-study by themselves, taking into account their own teaching experiences. However, self-study is 

not systematic, and there is little high-quality online training on how to improve the effectiveness of the 

reading classroom. This is not conducive to improving the ability of teachers as a whole to use different 

questioning strategies based on core literacy. At the same time, many teachers are not in the habit of 



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considering questioning when designing lesson plans, which means that questioning is not taken 

seriously and many teachers do not pay attention to it. 

 

4. Strategies for Improving the Efficiency of English Language Teaching 

4.1 Encourage Students to Think Holistically 

During the questioning process, the teacher can design questions that can stimulate students’ ability to 

think comprehensively. These questions can guide students to connect the information in the article with 

their knowledge and experience to form a deeper understanding. For example, students can be asked to 

give their own or evaluate the ideas in the article based on the content of the article. 

4.2 Ask Challenging Questions 

To develop students’ thinking skills, in the reading classroom, the teacher can ask challenging questions 

to stimulate students’ thinking. These questions can involve more complex processes of reasoning and 

analysis and require students to think and discuss deeply in relation to the text. 

4.3 Teaching Thinking Skills 

Teachers can introduce students to thinking skills in the classroom that will help improve their reasoning 

and analytical skills. These skills may include logical reasoning, problem decomposition, comparison 

and contrast, and so on. At the same time, teachers can guide students to use these skills in the 

problem-solving process to help them reason and analyze more effectively. 

4.4 Designing Appropriate Questioning Strategies 

In the reading classroom, teachers should devise appropriate questioning strategies to encourage students 

to think and participate in discussions. For example, open-ended and contextual questions can be used to 

allow students to think and apply their knowledge on their own, while selective questions can also be 

provided to help students make choices and decisions. 

To sum up, high school English reading questioning teaching strategies based on the quality of thinking 

can be achieved by guiding students to use their reasoning skills, encouraging integrated thinking, asking 

challenging questions, teaching thinking skills, and designing appropriate questioning strategies. These 

strategies will help enhance students’ thinking skills and develop their reasoning and analytical abilities. 

 

References 

Cui, R. H. (2022). A study on the effectiveness of classroom questioning by Primary School English 

teachers. Shanghai: Shanghai Normal University. 

Guilford, J. P. (1973). Characteristics of creativity [DB/OL]. Retrieved April 30, 2021 from 

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext 

He, E. P., & Ma, R. (2021). Research on the Cultivation of Learners’ Higher Order Thinking Ability 

based on Knowledge Progression. Educational Theory and Practice, (7). 

 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs              Education, Society and Human Studies             Vol. 5, No. 1, 2024 

 
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Liu, J. D. (2022). A Study on Teachers’ Questioning in high school English Reading Classroom Based 

on the Cultivation of Thinking Quality. 

Yusuf, I., Widyaningsih, S. W., Prasetyo, Z. K., & Istiyono, E. (2022). Blended learning: Its effect 

towards Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1832(1). 


