As an effective way to develop students’ thinking competence, dialogic education strategy is suggested by many scholars home and abroad. In this study, dialogic education is suggested to take the form of question sequences to realize the dynamic interaction between students and teachers in Chinese context so as to further develop students’ thinking competence. An experiment on the bases of question-sequence-based dialogic education strategy has been conducted in the study with one experimental group and a controlled group. The classroom observation and stimulated interview are used to reveal the patterns of student-teacher interaction, while stimulated interviews are adopted to get both teachers’ and students’ interpretation of their thinking processes underpinning their interaction. The result first shows question-sequence-based dialogic education strategy is effective in promoting the logic interaction between teachers and students. Secondly, the result also indicates that the students in the experimental group have developed dialogic awareness with more opportunities to speak and even initiate dialogue between teacher-students than students in the controlled group. Thirdly, the production of the experimental group are more logic, and with more breadth and depth in thinking. By comparing the two groups of students’ thinking competences, question-sequence-based dialogic education strategy proves to be an appropriate teaching strategy in that students’ awareness of thinking, inclination of thinking and thinking skills have been promoted in Chinese EFL teaching context.

 

Dialogic education, question sequence, thinking competence, Senior High School English