It is acknowledged that classroom questioning promotes students’ thinking and learning, but researches in actual classroom research concerning cognitive orientation of teachers’ questioning are not enough especially in middle schools. As we know, in China, English is regarded as a foreign language, although more and more Chinese start to learn English even in kindergarten. Thus, in the author’s opinion, we should study and analyze teachers’ classroom questioning to find out strategies of classroom questioning.

1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study

Not only is it beneficial for teachers to find techniques to improve the use of questions, but also it is important for us to conduct research into this phenomenon on account of the role. Thus the goal of this paper is to get a clearer picture about the present situation of teacher questioning in middle school English classroom teaching and try to find the main problems of teacher questioning and offer some effective suggestions to English teachers. At the same time, it can also enrich the findings which researchers have discovered in this field of teacher questioning and be helpful for students’ learning and thinking.

Questioning plays an important part in class teaching as a means to engage and enhance the students’ mind in each step of the teaching process. As reported, the ratio of questioning in class interaction activities is between 20％to 40％(Wang Duqin,2002:101)．And it is of dominance in the comprehensible input and the chances for output production (Richard and Lockhart, 1994:185). These two factors are considered theoretically crucial for English teaching and learning. Questions asked by teachers in class provide information, which can help students connect knowledge to previous and subsequent learning. Thus, they take students to the highest level of learning, in which they can apply knowledge in various situations in their lives. The attention that teachers give to planning questions will determine how well they and the students finish their educational goals． 

1.3 Overall Structure of the Thesis

The paper will stress the existing problems of English classroom questioning in middle school, emphasize the reasons of the problems and focus on questioning strategies of the problems. This paper is based on Krashen’s Input Hypothesis and Swain’s Output Hypothesis.

This thesis is made up of five parts, and to be more specific, it is arranged as the followings:

Chapter one is Introduction. This chapter gives a presentation of the whole thesis. It reviews the background in this field, then states the significance and purpose of the study, and finally presents the structure of the thesis.文献综述

Chapter two is Literature Review. This chapter states the related theories, which includes Krashen’s Input Hypothesis and Swain’s Output Hypothesis. In addition, this chapter also presents some important aspects relating to classroom questioning, such as definition of questioning, kinds of questioning and functions of questioning.

Chapter three is Problems of Asking Questions in English Classroom in MSAHNU.    

Chapter four is the Suggestions to Question Strategies in English Classroom.

Chapter five is Conclusion It is the final part of the thesis, which sums up the mainr findings of the research, and then points out limitations of this study.