In this era of information and economic globalization, developing critical thinking skills in college students has been set as a primary goal and learning outcome in higher education. Teaching critical thinking, however, is a great challenge to most EFL teachers. This article, therefore, attempts to examine the nature and teachability of critical thinking, analyze and discuss the functions and types of teacher questions as well as Bloom's Taxonomy of Questions. Its primary purpose is to help EFL classroom instructors gain a deep understanding of teacher questions and get to know how to use higher order questioning to enhance EFL students' critical thinking ability.
Functional grammar has received more and more attention from domestic scholars in the world of linguistics since 1970s, but it is still new to most EFL teachers. In spite of controversies about its applications into classroom teaching, this new grammar model has its own advantages and can facilitate EFL students to achieve academic success. This paper, based on current literature, examines and analyzes the following issues: the nature of functional grammar, the key concepts of functional grammar, the fundamental differences between traditional grammar and functional grammar, and the implications for English teaching and learning. The purpose of this paper is to help EFL teachers have an overall understanding of the theory and key concepts of functional grammar as well as the positive role functional grammar plays in school contexts.
Form-focused instruction (FFI) and communication-focused instruction (CFI) are two different L2 or foreign language teaching approaches. In actual teaching practice, almost every EFL teacher has a preference for them so that these two instructional approaches dominate EFL classrooms to a great extent. This study, by using a self-designed questionnaire, attempts to examine student perceptions toward FFI and CFI. The subjects in this quantitative study were 300 ninth graders and 300 twelfth graders from two public urban schools. Findings from two-way MANOVA analysis revealed that: 1) Both ninth-grade and twelfth-grade students held highly positive perceptions toward CFI, but they were not very positive toward FFI. In contrast, ninth graders showed more positive perceptions toward FFI than twelfth graders. 2) Gender differences existed in student perceptions toward FFI. Male students were more positive toward FFI than female students. 3) Results showed that the two predictors FFI and CFI had certain correlations with the academic achievement of ninth-grade and twelfth-grade students. Based on the findings of this study, a few constructive conclusions are as follows: 1) EFL teachers are encouraged to apply the communicative approach in class to foster and develop secondary school students' communication skills. 2) Teaching grammar to junior high and male students is likely to achieve effective results. 3) EFL teachers need to take gender differences into account when they design English curriculum. 4) Both FFI and CFI can help students achieve academic success at school.
In the contexts of unusually intense competition for international talents, no one denies the importance of cultivating students' critical thinking ability. Teaching students to think critically and creatively, however, is a great challenge to every classroom teacher. This article examines the role of teacher questions, discusses the connotation of higher order questions and classifications of questions-Bloom's Taxonomy of questions, Socratic questions and metacognitive questions, explores the relationship between teacher questions and students' critical thinking development, and provides effective suggestions for asking higher-order questions. It intends to help classroom instructors gain a deep understanding of teacher questions and train students to think critically through higher-order questioning.
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