Investigating Elementary Expert Teachers’ Questioning Strategies that Promote Students’ Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

This study investigated how expert Chinese language teachers led inquiry-based reading comprehension of texts through multi-level questioning, and how these teachers implemented specific discursive scaffolding strategies in various levels of questioning. The study employed mixed research method, combining quantitative and qualitative content analysis to examine the transcripts of instructional videos from nine expert teachers who used the Literacy-oriented Elementary Mandarin Chinese Textbooks as experimental teaching materials. The results indicated that the most frequently asked questions initiated by the expert teachers during classes were still level one and two questions. Moreover, teachers used clarification and follow-up as the discursive scaffolding strategies when they initiated level one and level two questions, whereas higher order thinking scaffolding strategy such as requesting alternative answers typically was associated with teachers’ level three and four questions. Lastly, there were three different objectives for teachers to use in their questioning strategies, namely “construct details,” “incorporate reading strategies to solve puzzles,” and “develop criticisms.” The teachers flexibly switched questioning levels and discursive scaffolding strategies based on their purpose of dialogue to meet learners’ needs. The study concludes that different levels of questions expert teachers asked played different roles in classroom discussion, and that the teachers adjusted question levels and discursive scaffolding strategies based on their instructional principles. The study serves as a reference for future research in instructional dialogue and questioning.

Keywords

• discursive scaffolding strategies
• mandarin chinese
• reading comprehension
• teachers’ questioning