Asking Questions

One of the ways to initiate instructional conversation is to ask questions. In order to provide more opportunities for learners to have social interaction in class and elicit more output from learners, teachers usually use questions as an instructional tool when interacting with the entire class (cf. Chaudron, 1988; Mehan, 1979; Mollica, 1994; Nunan, 1991).

There are many ways to classify teacher questions. The most commonly used classification is closed/display and open/referential questions (Barnes, 1975; Long &

Sato 1983). According to Barnes’ and Long and Sato’s definition, “closed/display question” refers to the teacher has known the answers and requires fixed answers.

They are useful to elicit short and mechanical responses. “Open /referential question,”

on the other hand, refers to the teacher does not know the answer and usually requires more complex answers.

A number of studies about teacher questioning have been conducted in ESL context to investigate how teachers’ questions engage learners in instructional interactions, check students’ comprehension, and build students’ understanding of complex concept (Cazden, 1988; Chaudron, 1988; Hatch, 1992; Long, 1981; Mehan, 1979; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988; Wells, 1996). Moreover, the functions of questions have been examined in some studies (Forman, McCormick, & Donato, 1993; Wong, 1991). McCormick and Donato (2000) did research to observe how a university ESL

teacher’s questioning strategies scaffold language learning during teacher-fronted activities and how questions asked reflect Wertsch’s (1985) six scaffolding functions.

Taking direction maintenance questions (abbreviation as DM Questions; the questions for maintaining students’ motivation and participation) as an example, the teacher used DM questions to check students’ comprehensibility and encourage more students to participate (e.g., You mean…? / I guess what you said is …?). The results of this study showed that students were able to achieve tasks when the teacher’s questions were used effectively. In addition, the teacher chose questions selectively based on her goals of specific course. Hsu’s study shared a similar finding. Hsu (2001) examined teacher questions in L2 classroom and the subjects included two teachers and 27 ESL learners in American college. The results showed that teacher questioning are like elicitation tools and attention-drawing devices and are used to provide corrective feedback, trigger learners’ output, and promote learners’ performance, cognitive thinking, and self-regulation.

Some studies examined display questions in ESL contexts (Cullen, 1998; Long

& Sato, 1983; Markee, 2000; Nunn, 1999; Van Lier, 1988). Some of them indicated closed questions are commonly used but do not generate adequate language output from students. Therefore, closed questions are pedagogically meaningless (Baetens Beardsmore, 1996; Chua-Wong & McLellan, 1996; Martin, 1990). However, Ho (2005) had different perspective and indicated that closed questions are pedagogically meaningful. Ho (2005) observed three non-native ESL teachers in Brunei and found that teachers’ questions can be classified into three-levels rather than only two fixed types of questions which include open and closed questions. Level 1 is similar to closed/display questions and level 3 is similar to open/referential questions. The only difference is level 2 which concerns with general knowledge, vocabulary and language proficiency questions. Level 2 questions may elicit few possible answers

and the teacher may know the answers; however, the students may not. This kind of questions may or may not stimulate lengthy responses but students can be engaged cognitively in the process of answering the questions. The teacher asks this kind of questions purposefully in order to introduce the topic of class or test students’ general knowledge. Due to this factor, the intentions behind the questions have to be considered. In Ho’s (2005) study, display questions are pedagogically meaningful if we take the teacher’s purpose into account. In addition to Ho’s (2005) study, Lee (2006) used a procedural approach to investigate how ESL teachers in a mid-western U.S. university use display questions in class. This study used sequential analysis which focuses on three-turn sequence of initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) to examine display questions. The results showed that there were three ways for teachers to demonstrate display questions. First, the teacher made her display questions answerable and students could recognize the question and offered the answer. Second, the teacher used students’ common sense knowledge and asked students to recall their past experiences. Third, the teacher used display question as a repair to negotiate what is being asked and keep asking a better question to elicit the correct answer more quickly. This study revealed that display questions are available and important resources for teachers to initiate and to continue interaction with students in class.

Two studies above showed that ESL teachers’ ways of using display questions in class and the practice of display questions depend on teachers’ pedagogic intentions.

To the best of my knowledge, there are relatively few studies investigating the strategy of asking questions in an EFL context, in which class hours are sometimes the only time that assistances can be provided for students to learn English (Hussin, 2006; Wu, 1993). Hussin (2006) did a qualitative research to examine the dimensions of questioning in secondary school classrooms in Malaysia. The results showed that the majority of questions set by the EFL classes were low-level, which students can

answer with little cognitive thinking. Moreover, there was a mismatch between the national curriculum and teachers’ questions in the real class. While the national policy is to help learners become critical thinkers, teachers seem concerned other short term goals because of the entrance examination. According to Hussin’s study, we know that teachers in Malaysia tend to use low-level questions in class because of the entrance exam. However, it did not mention how the teachers asked these “low-level”

questions.

To sum up, the strategy of asking questions has been examined in ESL context, in which assistances for students’ English learning can often be obtained inside and outside of classroom (Cazden, 1988; Chaudron, 1988; Hatch, 1992; Long, 1981;

Mehan, 1979; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988; Wells, 1996); however, few studies have investigated this strategy in an EFL context, in which class hours are sometimes the only time that assistances can be provided for students to learn English (Hussin, 2006;

Wu, 1993). That is, there are limited investigations of how EFL teachers use the strategy of asking questions to assist students’ learning in class. In addition to the strategy of asking questions, there is a need to explore other types of strategies which are used by ESL and EFL teachers to assist students’ learning.