Teacher Questioning from a Discourse Perspective

Abstract

Although evidence from education research indicates that questions account for the majority of class time and are significant pedagogical tools, little is known about teachers’ views on questioning.  The present study aimed to explore interaction patterns generated by questions in an EFL class and the teacher’s use and views on questioning by using discourse analysis, classroom observation, and interviews with the teacher.  Initiation-response-feedback interaction patter (I-R-F) was the most frequently found pattern and teacher’s questions served to initiate much of the talk in classroom. The triangulation of the data sources revealed that display questions were found more frequently than referential questions during the reading activities and that the teacher asked questions to 1) engage the students; 2) elicit responses to be used as content for teaching;  and 3) guide the students to apply prior knowledge to better comprehend the reading.  This was in line with findings from educational research studies about cognitive roles of questions and shed light on the use of display questions in language classroom.