Owing to the significance of classroom questioning, it is urgent for teachers to acquire the knowledge about it and make it into practice。 The studies of classroom questioning will be of great benefit to a better understanding of how English is learned, especially on the basis of students’ higher motivation of learning。 By studying the demonstration class of famous teachers, the author tries to give English teachers of middle schools some hints about how to raise questions, which could help them work out more measures to use questions appropriately to arouse students’ learning motivation and facilitate students’ language learning。

1。3 Overall Structure of the Thesis

This whole thesis consists of five chapters。

Chapter One presents a brief introduction to the research background, the significance, and the overall structure of the thesis。

Chapter Two is the literature review part, which deals with the definition of classroom questioning and motivation, the classification of classroom questioning and motivation and some related significant theories in language teaching and learning, laying a solid foundation for theoretical background of the present study。

Chapter Three is composed of the methodology and design of the survey study。 The research questions, the participants, instruments and data collection are presented in this part。

Chapter Four is concerning with results and analysis。 In this part, the results of the research questions are presented。 And the influence of classroom questioning on students’ learning motivation is analyzed in reference to the research questions。

Chapter Five elaborates the major findings, implications and limitations of the study。 Also, it makes suggestions for further research。

2。 Literature Review

2。1 Classroom Questioning

    2。1。1 Definition of Questioning

    There are numerous ways to define “question” in general education and other fields。 Etymologically, the word question is originated from the Latin verb quaerere that means to seek。

    From the educational perspective, classroom questions are defined as instructional stimuli or cues applied by teachers to activate students to think and respond to teachers’ messages。 They enable students to express their own thoughts and feelings through their answer。 Ur (2000) provides the definition of a question as “a teacher utterance which has the objective of eliciting an oral response from the learners”。 Lu & Hong (2010) finds that classroom questioning is an activity through which teachers intentionally offer teaching stimuli and hints on knowledge learning, and what and how students should do。 Accordingly, questioning can be regarded as an interactive process which aims to involve students in the learning process and elicit thoughtful responses．

    2。1。2 Types of Classroom Questioning

    Researchers have made attempts to describe the types of verbal questions given by teachers during the classroom teaching。 Categorization of questions varies from one perspective to another。 With each reflecting a different purpose or focus, different taxonomy are developed for classifying classroom questions。

    One of the criteria is ground on the form of questions: whether it is of the yes/no type, or wh-/how type, translation type or elicitation type (Luo, 1999)。 Translation is a commonly used form of classroom questioning in language learning。 Confronted with a particular language point, students are supposed to do some translation work。 Elicitation means that the teacher will firstly give a part of a sentence, and then invite students to complete the whole sentence。

    The second dimension of classification is created in terms of the content of questions, according to which Thompson (1997) pides questions into two parts：whether it asks about outside facts，personal facts or opinions。 In his opinion, outside facts refer to information that is not particularly related to the learner。 This to a large extent consists of the information on the situation or text on which the teaching is based。 Personal facts are relevant to the learner’s own life and opinions。 Learners are asked to talk about themselves instead of what is provided by the textbooks。