A Case Study of Teacher's Questioning and Students' Critical Thinking in College EFL Reading Classroom

The present case study mainly focused on the effects of a teacher's questions on the development of students' critical thinking. The purpose was to investigate whether teacher's questions could facilitate students' critical thinking which required students to manipulate knowledge instead of direct recalling. Classroom observation and interview were employed in the study. A teacher's questioning behavior was observed and 17 students were interviewed. The results showed the teacher asked more lower-cognitive questions (79.2%) than higher ones (20.8%). Based on the theory of the cognitive domain, results revealed that excessive use of lower-cognitive questions could not facilitate the development of students' critical thinking. Additionally, the misuse of higher-cognitive questions by the teacher was also identified.