teacher question in the junior high school … · table 4.11 focusing learners’ attention on...

TEACHER QUESTION IN THE JUNIOR HIGH

SCHOOL ENGLISH CLASSROOM

A THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain the MagisterHumaniora (M. Hum) Degree in English Language Studies

by

LESLY NARWASTI NDUN126332042

THE GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

STUDIES SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA

2015

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJIPLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

i

A THESIS

TEACHER QUESTION IN THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH

CLASSROOM

by

LeslyNarwastiNdun

Students Number:126332042

Approved by

Dr. B.B. Dwijatmoko, M.A.Advisor Yogyakarta,February 27, 2015


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A THESIS


CLASSROOM

Presented by

LeslyNarwastiNdun

Students Number:126332042

Defended before the Thesis Committee

and Declared Acceptable

THESIS COMMITTEE

Chairperson : Drs.F.X. MukartoPh.D ….………………

Secretary : Dr. B.B. Dwijatmoko,M.A ………………….

Members : 1.Dr. J. Bismoko ………………….

2.JSM.Pudji Lestari, S.Pd. M.Hum ………………….

Yogyakarta, February 27, 2015The Graduate Program DirectorSanata Dharma University

Prof. Dr. Agustinus Supratiknya


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Statement of Originality

This is to certify that all ideas, phrases, sentences, unless otherwise stated are the

ideas, phrases, and sentences of the thesis writer. The writer understands of the

fuIl consequences including degree cancellation if she took somebody else's ideas,

phrases, or sentences without proper references.

Yogyakarta, February 27, 2015

Lesly Narwasti Ndun


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LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH

UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS

Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma:

Nama : Lesly Narwasti Ndun

Nomor Mahasiswa : 126332042

Demi perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan

Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul:


CLASSROOM

beserta perangkat yang diperlukan. Dengan demikian saya memberikan hak

kepada perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan

dalam media lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data,

mendistribusikannya secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikannya di internet atau

media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta ijin dari saya

maupun memberikan royalti kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya

sebagai penulis.

Dermikian pernyataan ini saya buat dengan sebenarnya.

Dibuat di Yogyakarta

Pada tanggal: 27 Februari 2015

Yang menyatakan

Lesly Narwasti Ndun


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I gave my highest gratitude to Jesus Christ, my Lord, for without His

guidance and blessing, this thesis would have never been finished. Amidst the

wonderful people, I would like to say my deepest gratitude, first, to Dr. B.B.

Dwijatmoko, M.A., my supervisor, for his advice, help, support, understanding,

and especially his patience. Many times I forced him to examine my thesis. Thus I

know without his patience and care, I would not finish it. I also deliver my

gratitude to the examiners of my thesis, Dr. J. Bismoko, Drs. F.X. Mukarto, Ph.D.

and Dr. F.R. Alip, M.Pd., M.A. for their help in reading my thesis and giving their

idea for the improvement of this thesis.

My huge and untold thanks go to my family. The first is my husband,

Marthen, who gave me a chance to study regardless his hard time for being a

father and a “mother” for the kids. Next is my three beloved kids, Jonathan and

Bryan and Vionna who always made me laugh every time I am desperate.

I would like to send my great thanks for my best friends in KBI, Dinar,

Indes, Mayang, and Andrew. Thank you all for help that accompany me during

my study. I cannot mention all help one by one that you have ever shared with

me. My family in PD Kasih, Andhy, Veven, Ani, Luki, Vhian, and Kak Vid,

Living with you people was my best time in Yogyakarta. Thanks for all the

support and all memorable joys we have ever shared together, thanks for helping

me to be a better person.

Yogyakarta, February 2, 2015


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TABLE OF CONTENT

COVER PAGE……………………………………………………………….…

APPROVAL PAGE…………………………………………………………..

ACCEPTANCE…………………………………………………………………..

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY…………………………………………LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH

UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS………………………………………….

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT………………………………………………………..

TABLE OF CONTENT…………………………………………………………….

LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………………………

ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………………

ABSTRAK………………………………………………………………………..

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION………………………………………………

A. Background………………………………………………………………

B. Problem Identification……………………………………………………

C. Research Question………………………………………………………….

D. Research Objective…………………………………………………………

E. Research Benefit………………………………………………………………………

CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURE………………………………….

A. The Meaning of a Question………………………………………………….

B. The Importance of Question………………………………………………

1. The Importance of Question in English Classes………………………

2. Teacher Question and Language Learning…………………………….

C. The Purpose of Question…………………………………………………….

D. D.Types and Classification of Question………………………………………..

E. Wait-time……………………………………………………………………..

F. Related Research……………………………………………………………

G. Theoretical Framework…………………………………………………….

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CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY……………………………

A. Nature of Research………………………………………………………..

B. Data Setting and Sources…………………………………………………..

C. Data Collection Instrument………………………………………………….

1. Video-tape……………………………………………………………

2. Questionnaire………………………………………………………….

D. Data Analysis………………………………………………………………

E. Data Validation and Reliability……………………………………………

CHAPTER IV: RESULT AND DISCUSSION……………………………..

A. Brief Summary of the Lesson………………………………………………

B. Result……………………………………………………………………….

1. Types of teachers’ Questions……………………………………………….

a. Display Questions……………………………………………………..

1) Complete Verbal Question…………………………………….

2) Incomplete verbal Question…………………………………………………

3) Complete Pronominal Question…………………………………………………

4) Incomplete Pronominal Question…………………………………………………

5) One-word Question…………………………………………………

6) Phrase Question…………………………………………………

7) Indonesian-English Mixed Question…………………………………………………

8) Pure Indonesian Question…………………………………………………

b. Referential Questions…………………………………………………

2. Functions of the Questions…………………………………………………

a. Function of Display Questions…………………………………………………

1) Checking Learners’ Understanding…………………………………………………

2) Arousing Interest and Curiosity Concerning a Topic…………

3) Focusing Attention on a Particular Issue or Concept…………

4) Controlling Classroom………………………………………….

b. Functions of Referential Question…………………………………..

1) Eliciting Information…………………………………………………

3. Students’ Responses toward Teachers’ Questions………………………….

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a. Number of Words Students Produced……………………………..

b. Ways of Responding……………………………………………..

c. Correctness…………………………………………………………

d. Wait-time…………………………………………………………..

C. Discussion……………………………………………………………………

1. Type of Teacher Question………………………………………………….

2. Function of Question………………………………………………………..

3. Students Responses…………………………………………………………

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION…………………………………………………

A. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………

B. Recommendation……………………………………………………………

BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………….

APPENDICES………………………………………………………………..

Appendix 1 Display Question in Class A…………………………………………………

Appendix 2 Display Question in Class B…………………………………………………

Appendix 3 Display Question in Class D…………………………………………………

Appendix 4 Display Question in Class E…………………………………………………

Appendix 5 Referential Question in Class A…………………………………………………

Appendix 6 Student’s Questionnaire………………………………………

Appendix 7 Teacher’s Questionnaire……………………………………..

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1 Type of display question ………………...................................................36Table 4.2 Referential question asked in class A ………………………………….46Table 4.3 Function of question ………………………………………………..49Table 4.4 Checking learners’ understanding class A ……………………………….49Table 4.5 Checking learners’ understanding class B ………………………………..51Table 4.6 Checking learners’ understanding class D ……………………………….52Table 4.7 Checking learners’ understanding class E ……………………………….53Table 4.8 Arousing interest and curiosity class A …………………………………54Table 4.9 Arousing interest and curiosity class B …………………………………55Table 4.10 Arousing interest and curiosity class D ……………………………..56Table 4.11 Focusing learners’ attention on particular issue or concept

class A …………………………………………………………… 57Table 4.12 Focusing learners’ attention on particular issue or concept

class D …………………………………………………………… 57Table 4.13 Controlling classroom class D ………………………………………58Table 4.14 Eliciting information ………………………………………………58Table 4.15 The length of students’ responses ………………………………………..62Table 4.16 Ways of responding ………………………………………………. 64Table 4.17 Correctness ……………………………………………………………..65Table 4.18 Wait-time …………………………………………………………….67


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ABSTRACT

Lesly Narwasti Ndun. 2012. Teachers’ Questions in a Junior High School EnglishClassroom. Yogyakarta. The Graduate Program, English Language Studies, SanataDharma University.

In a classroom context, typically teachers ask a lot of questions. Researchindicates that whether in a content classroom or in a language classroom, teachersask many questions. The standard pattern in the classroom is one in which theteacher asks questions, one or more students respond to the questions, and thenthe teacher evaluates the responses. Thus, in terms of a classroom context, aquestioning session happens naturally as a process of learning.

This research deals with teachers’ questions in a junior high school Englishclassroom. The study was conducted to answer questions What types of questionsdo the teachers tend to use in the daily practices of teaching in the EFL classroom,what are the function of the questions asked by the teachers, and how do thestudents respond to the questions.. The study was conducted at Public MiddleSchool 2 in Soe, South Central Timor. The study was carried out by observing andtaking video recordings of two eighth grade English teachers. Eight observationswere conducted in four classes of two weeks of lessons.

The findings indicate that in the question type, display questions (92%)were highly uttered by the teachers rather than referential questions (8.1%). Indisplay questions, the biggest category of questions asked by the teachers wascomplete pronominal questions (49.05%), which are questions in the form of WHquestions. Meanwhile, for 7 (8.1%) referential questions, there were 4 completepronominal questions and 3 complete verbal questions posed by the teachers.

As the purposes of learning English in a junior high school context is toengage students to communicate in spoken and written language, all thequestioning functions are related to eliciting information, checking students’understanding of the lesson being taught, and encouraging them to participatemore in the classroom. Therefore, the questions posed by the teachers were highlydistributed.

The study is beneficial for both teacher and students in English languageclassroom. Questioning and answering session happen to force students to speakEnglish even though it is only telling what they know about the lesson. It is alsobeneficial for teachers who facilitate students’ language ability through askingeffective question in an effective way. Once teacher pose certain type of question,it can be developed into some other question that engage students to speak usingthe language.


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ABSTRAK

Lesly Narwasti Ndun. 2012. Teacher’s Questions in Junior High School EnglishClassroom. Yogyakarta. The Graduate Program, English Language Studies, SanataDharma University.

Lumrahnya, guru mengajukan banyak pertanyaan di dalam kelas. Penelitiantentang pertanyaan menunjukan bahwa guru mengajukan banyak sekalipertanyaan baik di kelas pembelajaran bahasa maupun di kelas lainnya. Polastandar di kelas adalah guru bertanya, satu atau lebih siswa menjawab/meresponpertanyaan tersebut, kemudian guru mengevaluais jawaban tersebut. Jadi, didalam konteks ruang kelas, sesi tanya jawab terjadi secara alami sebagai sebuahproses pembelajaran.

Penelitian ini berhubungan dengan pertanyaan guru di kelas bahasa InggrisSMP. Studi ini dilakukan untuk menjawab beberapa pertanyaan menyangkut tipepertanyaan yang digunakan guru selama jam pelajaran berlangsung, fungsi daripertanyaan tersebut, dan respon siswa terhadap pertanyaan guru tersebut. Studi inidilaksanakan di SMP Negeri 2 Soe, Kabupaten Timor Tengah Selatan melaluiobservasi kelas dan pengambilan video mengajar tiga guru bahasa Inggris padakelas dua. Terdapat delapan kalo observasi yang dilakukan pada empat kelasselama dua minggu pelajaran.

Hasil penelitian ini menunjukan bahwa untuk tipe pertanyaan, Displayquestion (92%) lebih banyak ditanyakn dari pada Referential question (8,1%).Pada display question, kategori pertanyaan yang paling sering ditanyakan adalahComplete Pronominal Question (49,05%), dalam bentuk WH question. Sementaraitu, untuk tujuh (8,1%) Referential question, terdapat empat complete pronominalquestion dan 3 complete verbal question yang ditanyakan oleh guru.

Tujuan pembelajaran bahasa Inggris dalam konteks SMP adalah menghantarsiswa agar dapat berbicara bahasa Inggris. Tentu saja semua fungsi pertanyaanyang dilontarkan oleh guru adalah untuk mendapatkan informasi, mengetahuipemahaman siswa terhadap pelajaran yang diajarkan, dan mendorong merekauntuk lebih berpartisipasi di dalam kelas.

Studi ini berguna bagi guru dan siswa pada kelas pembelajaran bahasaInggris. Sesi bertanya dan menjawab terjadi sebagai cara untuk mendorong siswaberbicara bahasa dalam Inggris, sekalipun jawaban para siswa hanya seputarpemahaman mereka tentang topik pembelajaran. Hal ini juga berguna bagi gurusebagai fasilitator kemampuan berbahasa siswa melalui bertanya secara efektif.Ketika guru menanyakan tipe pertanyaan tertentu, hal ini kemudian berkembangmenjadi beberapa pertanyaan lain dengan tujuan yang sama yaitu membuat siswaberbicara menggunakan bahasa Inggris.


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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This chapter provides the background of the study related to teachers’

questions that was conducted in a junior high school setting in Soe, South Central

Timor. It begins with the background of the research and explains what prompted

the researcher to conduct the research. It then moves to identify the problem that

the researcher wants to discuss throughout this thesis and clarifies the objectives

and benefits of doing this research.

A. Background

The aim of education according to law no. 2 year of 1989, is to generate the

knowledge, skill, and scientific progress that improve the life of nation and

develop Indonesian people. It should then help learners acquire knowledge

through comprehension. Because of its potential to promote comprehension and

learning, questioning is considered as one of the most influential teaching

strategies. Academic research confirms that students develop critical thinking

skills through teacher facilitated questions (Ennis, 1996). Ennis emphasizes that

asking students questions is a way to build complex conceptualizations and foster

critical thinking. Thus, this research will deal with one aspect of classroom

interaction, which is questioning.

Teachers ask a lot of questions. In fact, the standard pattern in the classroom

is one in which the teacher asks a question, and one or more students respond to

the question (Richards, 2000). Then, the teacher evaluates the response. That is

why Ellis (2008) proposes two reasons why teachers ask questions in their

classrooms. First, questions require responses; therefore, they serve as a means of


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obliging learners to contribute to the interaction. Learners’ responses also provide

the teacher with feedback which can be used to adjust content and expression in

subsequent teacher-talk. Second, questions serve as a device for controlling the

progress of the interaction through which a lesson is enacted. It has been found

that questions can also be used to motivate students, to revise, control, test or

assess, explore, explain, encourage students to focus on a particular topic, elicit

information, and check understanding and to control behavior (Young 1992;

Richards and Lockhart 1994).

If we take a look at the practice of teaching English in Timorese secondary

schools today, you may observe a complex problem. Studies made by Daniel

(2006) on technical and vocational training institutes confirm that students have

difficulties in using the language and in interacting in the classroom. Most

scholars agree about the importance of questioning to lighten some of these

problems. Supporting this view, Moghadam and Barjesteh 2014 states that,

“Teachers’ questions serve as a mean of engaging learners’ attention to promote

verbal responses and evaluate learners’ progress.” Therefore, one of the measures

that can be taken to improve teachers’ questioning skills is in assessing how

teachers ask questions in an EFL classroom.

The situation in which the questioning session dominates the teaching

learning process exists in a Timorese educational setting. In the classroom,

teachers ask a lot of questions related to the lessons being taught. One of the

reasons for doing that is to get students to speak up. Related to English learning,

students are expected to produce in the target language. One way to make this

expectation come true is by answering the questions using English. Classroom


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interactions will happen when students respond to the teacher’s questions, and

vice versa. This implies that students can actively participate in the classroom

when they are questioned, and at the same time they need to answer the questions

by using the target language. Moreover, students’ language proficiency can be

improved through interactions between the teacher and the students and among

the students themselves.

Research on questioning indicates that teachers, whether in content

classrooms or language classrooms, ask many questions (Ellis, 1993). In a study

of six ESL teachers, Long and Sato (1983 in Ellis 2008 ) found that 938 questions

were asked by teachers in six elementary ESL lessons. Young, as cited in Nhlapo

(1998), states that questioning is a favorite teacher methodology, and that roughly

60% of all classroom talk is composed of questions and nearly all of them are

asked by teachers. Another study done by Gambrell in Qashoa (2013) revealed

that teachers asked questions every forty three seconds. Furthermore, Brualdi

(1998) points out that eighty percent of a teacher’s school day is taken up asking

questions to students. Thus, classroom teachers spend most of their lesson time

conducting questioning sessions.

Considering the great quantity of teacher talk in the classroom, questioning

plays a role as a reflection of teaching. Vogler, in Qashoa (2013), states that

questions can monitor comprehension; it can make connections to prior learning

and can stimulate cognitive growth. In a classroom setting, teacher questions and

student answers are considered as a powerful teaching approach if they are used to

expose contradictions, challenge assumptions, and lead to new knowledge.

Therefore, teachers should design questions which can expand students’


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knowledge and promote creative thinking. Thus, asking a good question is

cognitively demanding.

However, Cotton (2010) says that the content of the questions and the

manner in which teachers ask them determines whether or not they are effective.

Some mistakes that teachers make during the question and answer process include

asking vague questions, asking trick questions, and asking questions that may be

too abstract for children of their age. When questions such as those mentioned are

asked, students will usually not know how to respond and may answer the

questions incorrectly. Thus, their feelings of failure may cause them to be more

hesitant to participate in class.

Teachers’ questions, in relation with the contributions that they can make to

language learning, will depend on students’ responses. the responses can be

recitation or discussion The question type and the time given to students help

them formulate their answers as responses to the question. Sometimes students

have no time to formulate or even to think about the answer to a certain question

asked by the teacher. That is why the wait time is also crucial in having good

responses to questions being asked.

B. Problem Identification

This research examines teachers’ questions in the EFL classroom and the

impact they have on the language learning process. Teachers’ questions are one of

the teaching strategies that can help students acquire the target language better.

Typically, a teacher asks a question without considering what type of question is

being asked and how much time he/she gives for the students to formulate their

answers. Consequently, he/she does not get sophisticated responses from the


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students or even no responses at all. By asking the right type of question and

giving enough time for students to formulate their answers, a teacher

automatically gets two benefits in language learning. First, a teacher can check

students’ comprehension of the lesson being taught, and second, he/she can

monitor students’ language proficiency.

Thinking back of my own days in elementary and secondary school, after

listening to the teacher’s explanation, I would wait for the teacher to call on me

with a quick question; it usually required a brief reply. It did not matter whether

the subject was language or social studies or science, the question revealed

whether or not I remembered the material. Sometimes, the questions she asked

resulted in no responses from the students. That is why questions should be used

in a way in which they can create an effective and powerful learning environment.

Based on the above statement, a teacher should be aware of asking such a

question for the students to consider the question type, the function that it serves,

and the wait-time given to students. It is also important to acknowledge how

students respond to a question. After knowing what the teacher should do,

hopefully, he/she can obtain or even raise students’ comprehension in using the

target language.

C. Research Questions

This study aims to examine the types of questions which are used by

teachers in the class and to find out what purposes the questions convey in the

process of teaching. The study is based on the following questions:

1) What types of questions do the teachers tend to use in the daily practices

of teaching in the EFL classroom?


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2) What are the functions of the questions asked by the teachers?

3) How do the students respond to the questions?

D. Research Objectives

This research is aimed to identify the types of questions that are used in the

EFL classroom. Therefore, it is important to examine what kinds of questions are

used to devise a communicative classroom. That is an EFL classroom that helps

students acquires the target language better, so they can interact with one another

using the target language.

Since every question serves a different function in language learning, this

research also examines the reason why certain questions are asked in the

classroom. It happens because typically a teacher has no specific intention to ask a

certain question other than to check students’ learning comprehension. That is

because most of the questions are intended to identify a superficial understanding

of the material.

The last reason why this study is conducted is to explore students’ responses

toward teacher questions to examine whether they give the intended answers or

not. In a classroom setting, students typically respond to a teacher’s question

superficially. They do not give an answer that is provoked by the critical thinking

process. By analyzing the responses the students give, the researcher will know

which questions are suitable to use in order to encourage students’ critical

thinking process.

E. Research Benefits

This research has theoretical and practical benefits. Theoretically, teaching

and questioning have been viewed as integrally related activities (Beatty, Gerace,


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leonard, and Dufresne 2006 ). This research will benefit teachers in the context of

effective teaching and learning. In order to be an effective teacher, one must be an

effective questioner. One way to teach effectively is by recognizing that

questioning serves various functions and creates a different level of thinking.

Some questions require only a superficial understanding, while others cause

students to go beyond memory and use other thought processes in forming an

answer. By learning different kinds of questions and the different functions they

serve, it is a crucial step in being able to use all types of questions effectively.

Practically, this research will benefit teachers to have a well-planned lesson.

In the planning stages, teachers need to prepare materials that meet the objectives

of the lesson. By doing so, teachers can prepare questions which completely

analyze the content of lessons and engage students in active interactions during

classroom participation.


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CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

This chapter presents and discusses literature on teachers’ questions. It

begins with examining the conceptual meaning of a question. Given the

importance of questioning as a teaching strategy, the chapter also surveys the type

of questions teachers ask in their classrooms and the contributions those questions

have during classroom interactions. It then ends with a brief theoretical review of

research that has been reported on teachers’ questions in foreign language

classrooms.

A. The Meaning of a Question

A question is any sentence which has an interrogative form or function. In

classroom settings, teacher questions are defined as instructional cues or stimuli

that expose students to the content elements to be learned (Azerefegen, 2008). It

has become an essential part of instruction in that it allows teachers to monitor

student competence and understanding as well as increase thought-provoking

discussion (Critelli & Tritapoe 2010). This deals with leading students to acquire

certain knowledge.

In a teaching and learning context, question refers to any idea that requires

a response from listener. It is used to make a request for information.

Furthermore, the request itself is made by such an expression and the information

is provided with an answer. The situation takes place when the teachers want to

get students’ responses and the first step is to answer questions.

From these definitions, it can be generalized that the word ‘question’ refers

to any idea that requires a response from the listener or audience. Above all, in


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classroom settings, teacher questions are defined as instructional cues or stimuli

that convey content elements to be learned by students and directions for what

they are to do and how they are to do it. It involves hints about what students are

about to experience and techniques that call on students’ prior knowledge.

B. The Importance of Questions

Questions are vital to acquire knowledge. People usually ask questions to

one another to know something about unknown things. They are instruments to

examine new ideas, facts, in formation, knowledge and experiences (Azerefegen

2008). In line with this, Brown and Wragg (1993) say that we normally ask

questions when we really want to know something and, if we already know the

answer, then we don’t need to ask.

On top of that, questions play a great part in communication. It is used as a

learning tool to promote interaction (Ma 2008). Therefore, questions in the

language classroom enable the teacher to evaluate his or her students and motivate

students to attend lessons attentively.

In line with this, Richards and Lockharts (1994:185) have stated the

following as justifications for the important questions in teaching.

They stimulate and maintain students’ interest.They encourage students to think and focus on thecontent of the lesson.They enable teachers to check students’ understanding.They enable a teacher to elicit particular structures orvocabulary items.They encourage students’ participation in a lesson.

This implies that in the teaching and learning process, questions are the core

by which all communication between a teacher and pupils takes places. Also, they

are means of developing critical thinking abilities in pupils (Ennis, 1996:165).


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Questions, after all, are crucial features of the language and part of teaching

process (Hamiloglu, 2012).

One aspect to consider in a teaching learning context is students’

involvement in asking and answering questions, which is significant to language

teaching and learning. That is why it is important to handle and utilize such

questions properly in question and answer exchanges. Nhlapo (1998) also

corroborates this by saying that teachers’ questions are the quickest and the easiest

techniques for moving students toward real conversation. This confirms that

questions are essential in the teaching and learning process.

Questions in the language classroom play a significant role in promoting

learners’ language proficiency. They are employed to check students’

comprehension, to see if they have acquired the knowledge imparted, to focus

their attention and involvement in the lesson, to control behavior, and to

encourage the students to use the target language for communication (Tsui, 1995).

In line with this, (Klippel, 1983, as cited in Azerefegen (2008), suggests,

“Learning is more effective if learners are actively involved in the process.” Since

learners’ participation is really demanding, effective questions will stimulate

learners to use the target language more.

In order to promote effective teaching and learning, questions are one of the

techniques that are widely used in ESL classrooms. If they are properly handled

and employed, they may facilitate interactions and bring about the necessary

changes in the students’ language proficiency. In this regard, English teachers are

expected to develop the skills of asking effective questions (Sadker and Sadker,

1988). As questioning is believed to be one of the tools of effective teaching


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(Perrott, 1986), it is increasingly important for teachers to avoid ineffective

questioning patterns, for the questioning process is crucial to classroom

instruction.

Thus, to improve the learning opportunities for the class and to motivate

students to talk more and provide responses, teachers are expected to develop

questioning skills and employ different types of questions in EFL classrooms.

Besides that, students should also be encouraged to ask questions and give

responses to teachers’ questions. If students are given opportunities to talk,

teachers will be able to obtain feedback on students’ problems in understanding

some parts of the lesson.

Moreover, it might facilitate interactions and production of the target

language (Perott, 1986). It is believed that motivating students to communicate

with the language entails knowledge of the types of questions on the part of the

teacher. The teacher has to be well aware of the types of questions and the

purposes of questioning. Despite the fact that teachers have a major role in

classroom questioning, students also need to practice the ways of forming

different questions.

The teachers' questions can be considered as the most powerful device to

lead, extend, and control communication in the classroom. Actually, the style of

interaction between the teacher and students can be seen as a recycling process: “a

teacher's question, students' responses, and feedback” (Dillon, 1990; Westgate &

Hughes, 1997; Yang, 2002, as cited in Yang, 2006). This illustrates the dominant

role the teacher's questions play in classroom interactions.


13

Students’ skills in questioning, critical thinking, and negotiation of meaning

and interaction abilities can be promoted if language teachers are well aware of

the students’ right to ask questions. Allowing students to ask questions can

motivate, initiate, and engage them in various language activities to discover

answers to teachers’ questions and find out solutions to problems posed by their

teachers and classmates. Thus, it is essential for language teachers to acquire

questioning techniques which encourage students to reply.

1. The Importance of Questioning in English Classes

Questioning is a common technique used in English language teaching. The

goal is to check if the students understand what they have been taught, and to

enhance students’ involvement and to promote students’ creative thinking in

classroom interactions (Ennis, 1996). Questioning is considered as one of the

most essential and important techniques during instructional processes since

Socrates’ time (Sadker and Sadker, 1988). Questioning takes up most of teacher

talk, and it has been improved to have a great influence on classroom interactions.

Questioning has always been the most ubiquitous phenomenon observed in the

classroom, as well as one of the most frequently-adopted devices favored by most

teachers (Ellis, 2012). This implies that questioning sessions are unavoidable in

the teaching and learning process.

Questioning is one kind of active teaching procedure. It is one way of

teaching through teachers’ and students’ interactions in checking learning,

promoting thought, consolidating knowledge, using knowledge, and achieving

teaching goals. Questioning is usually used as one kind of mutual exchange


14

teaching skill between the teacher and students. It has been used widely in

teaching till now.

Thus, it can be understood that classroom questioning is the main part of

classroom teaching, and it is one of the teaching methods to get the aim of

classroom teaching. Teachers want to get students’ responses and the first step is

to answer questions. Through consistent dialog and communication, teachers can

get the answers they want and evaluate the students accordingly.

Questioning, as a general way used by teachers in the class, plays an

important role in classroom teaching. Questions are used to evaluate students’

knowledge and understanding of the subject matter. Questions can help to review

essential content in a subject. Questions can be used to control the social behavior

of students.

2. Teacher Questions and Language Acquisition

Acquiring a new language means being able to use the language in any

given situation. In language classroom, communicative competence has become a

goal that best achieved by giving attention to language use, to fluency, and to

students need to apply the language in classroom context as the rehearsal in the

real world (Brown 2002).

C. The Purpose of Questioning

Research indicates that questioning is one of the most familiar techniques

used by teachers in their classrooms (Lewis, 1990). Different researchers provide

various reasons why this is so. For example, Ellis (1992) proposes two reasons

why teachers ask questions in their classrooms.


15

First, questions require responses and, therefore, they serve as a means of

obliging learners to contribute to the interactions. Learners’ responses also

provide the teacher with feedback which can be used to adjust content and

expressions in subsequent teacher-talk. Second, questions serve as a device for

controlling the progress of the interactions through which a lesson is enacted. It

has been found that questions can also be used to motivate students, to revise,

control, test or assess, explore, explain, encourage students to focus on a particular

topic, elicit information, check understanding, and control behavior (Young, 1992;

Richards and Lockhart, 1994).

Brown & Wragg (1993) list several functions of questions, such as “to

arouse interest and curiosity concerning a topic, to focus attention on a particular

issue or concept, to develop an active approach to learning, and to stimulate pupils

to ask questions of themselves and others.” However, with reference to language

teaching, Nunan & Lamb (1996) state that teachers ask questions mainly to check

learners’ understanding, to elicit information, and to control their classrooms.

Peacock (1990, in Ezerefgn 2008), says that, “More often than not teachers appear

to ask questions either to find out what pupils do or do not know and understand,

or to remind them about work completed in a previous lesson, or perhaps to

challenge, stimulate, and develop their thinking.” Morgan and Saxton (1991 cited

in Brualdi 1998), add that teachers ask questions for several reasons. They ask

questions to keep their learners involved during lessons, to express their ideas and

thoughts, to enable learners to hear different explanations of the material, and to

help teachers evaluate their learners’ learning and revise their lessons when

necessary.


16

However, Nunan and Lamb (1996) warn researchers that, “Questions do not

necessarily serve one function.” Nunan and Lamb point out that a question to elicit

information may be directed (for purposes of control) to a student whose attention

is wandering, and only an extended context would show whether a question was

designed to elicit information or check understanding. What is more crucial though

is that the type of question asked might determine the nature of information the

teacher would like to elicit from students.

D. Types and Classifications of Questions

Teachers in the EFL classroom employ different types of questions to make

teaching effective and enhance learners’ proficiency in the target language. As it

has been explained by Richards and Lockharts (1994), there are three types of

questions. They are procedural, convergent, and divergent questions.

First, procedural questions have to do with classroom procedures and

routines and classroom management as opposed to the content of learning. For

example, Richards and Lockharts (1994:186), state that the following questions

usually occur in classrooms while teachers are checking that assignments had

been completed, that instructions for a task are clear, and that student are ready for

a new task.

Did everyone bring their homework?Do you all understand what I want to do?How much more time do you need?Can you all read what I have written on the blackboard?Did anyone bring a dictionary to class?Why aren’t you doing the assignment?

Procedural questions are designed to engage students in the content of the lesson,

to facilitate their comprehension, and to promote classroom interaction.


17

Second, convergent questions encourage similar student responses or

responses which focus on a central theme. These responses are often short

answers, such as “yes” or “no” or short statements. This means they do not

usually require students to engage in higher level thinking in order to come up

with a response but often focus on the recall of previously presented information

(Richards and Lockharts, 1994).

In general, convergent questions may expect the student to repeat some

conventional wisdom. Richards and Lockharts (1994:186) recommend the

following questions as convergent used by a teacher in introducing a reading

lesson focusing on the effects of computers.

How many of you have a personal computer in your home?Do you use it every day?What do you mainly use it for?What are some other machines that you have in your home?What are the names of some computer companies?What is the difference between software and hardware?

The last is divergent questions that encourage student responses which are

not short answers and which require students to engage in higher level thinking.

They encourage students to provide their own information rather than to recall

previously presented information. In general, divergent questions often require

students to analyze, synthesize, or evaluate a knowledge base and then project or

predict different outcomes.

Therefore, divergent questions often require new, creative insights. After

asking the convergent questions above, the teacher goes on to ask divergent

questions such as the following:

How many computers had an economic impact on society?How would business today function without computers?


18

Do you think computers have had any negative effects onsociety?What are the best ways of promoting the use of computersin education?

There are also other scholars who have explained the art of asking

questions. For instance, Erickson (2007) revealed that there are three types of

questions as being factual, conceptual, and provocative. However, this type of

classification is similar with the ones that have been discussed earlier. For

example, factual questions are the ones that are easily answered with definitive

and comparatively simple answers. Conceptual questions might be ones that are

convergent, divergent, or evaluative in construction. Provocative questions are

ones that entice and cannot be answered with easy answers. They are questions

that can be used to motivate and frame content or are essential questions.

Barnes, in Ellis (2012), distinguishes four types of questions he observes in

the secondary school classroom: (1) factual questions “what”, (2) reasoning

questions “how and why”, (3) open question that do not require reasoning, and (4)

social questions that influence student behavior by means of control or appeal.

Barnes makes much of the distinction between closed questions which are framed

with only acceptable answers in mind and open questions that permit a number of

different acceptable answers. He also points out that many questions seem to be

open questions but, in fact, when the teacher’s response to a student’s answer is

examined, it turns out to be closed, that is a pseudo-question.

Long and Sato (1983) have classified questions as display and referential

questions. Moreover, Nunan (1989) has indicated the distinction between display

and referential questions. He stated that, “A display question is one to which the

questioner knows the answer, whereas a referential question is one to which the


19

person asking the question does not know the answer.” He further commented that

referential questions provide an opportunity for to students to express their ideas

without any restrictions and develop the output of the target language.

Ellis (1992: 700) defines a display question as “one designed to test whether

the addressee has knowledge of a particular fact or can use a particular linguistic

item correctly”. Lightbown & Spada (1999) note that teachers ask display

questions not because they are interested in the answer, but because they want to

get their learners to display their knowledge of the language.

Nunan & Lamb (1996: 88) define referential questions as “those to which

the asker does not know the answer”. Ellis (1992: 721) also explains that these are

questions which are “genuinely information-seeking”. Lynch (1996) argues that

teachers should ask referential questions because (a) learners tend to give longer

answers than they do to display questions and (b) learners will be less willing to

answer questions if their purpose is always to test knowledge.

However, research also shows that there is considerable variation among

teachers (Ellis, 1992). Long and Sato’s study shows that in naturalistic discourse,

referential questions are more frequent than display questions, whereas display

questions are more frequent in whole-class teaching in ESL classrooms (Richards

and Lockhart, 1994). On the other hand, Johnson’s study indicates that one

teacher divided her questions more or less equally between display and referential

ones (Ellis, 1992).

The effects of display questions on students’ discourse patterns were

generally considered to be negative but positive for referential questions. Brock

(1986) conducted a study in which the effects of referential questions on adult


20

ESL classroom discourse were investigated. As a result, the students’ responses in

the experiment group who were asked referential questions were significantly

longer and syntactically more complex than those in the control-group class. This

suggests a positive correlation between asking referential questions and students’

production of the target language.

In another study, an ethnographic research done by Ernest (1994), it was

discovered that when the teacher asked display questions, students’ responses

were brief with little elaboration. As Goodwin (2001, cited in Myhill, Jones,

&Hopper, 2006) argues, learners tend to give short responses, and the teacher

does not encourage elaboration of those responses when display questions are

asked.

In brief, classroom data from a number of studies shows that display

questions are commonly asked while referential questions are rarely asked. For

the display questions, the learners’ responses tend to be brief with little

elaboration, but the responses elicited by referential questions are usually longer.

One of the best known classifications of questions is based on Bloom’s

taxonomy (1956). There are six levels of Bloom’s taxonomy and questions at each

level require the students responding to use a different kind of thought process.

These six levels are: knowledge comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis,

and evaluation (Cooper, 1986 and Perott, 1986).

Knowledge questions require the students to recognize or recall information.

The student is not asked to manipulate information, but merely to remember it just

as it was learned. To answer a question at the knowledge level, the students must


21

simply remember facts, observations, and definitions that have been learned

previously (Sadker and Sadker, 1982).

Unlike knowledge questions, comprehension questions require learners to

select those facts that are pertinent to answer the questions by describing,

comparing, or contrasting; that is, to answer comprehension questions, students

should go beyond the memorization or recalling of specific information, facts,

ideas, or procedures (Perrott, 1986; Cooper, 1986). In the words of Cooper, the

student “must demonstrate a personal grasp of the material by being able to

rephrase it to give a description in his or her own words, and to use it in making

comparisons” (1986:146).

Besides recalling, application questions call for students to apply

information they have learned in order to search for and find an answer to a

problem (Perrott, 1986). On top of that, questions at the application level of

taxonomy ask students to apply a rule or process to a problem so as to determine

the single correct answer to that problem (Cooper, 1986). There are key words

that help teachers to ask application questions. These are: apply, classify, use, give

an example, solve, design, and demonstrate (Sadker and Sadker, 1982).

Moreover, student learning can be enhanced not only by requiring them to

memorize ideas or procedures and asking them to rephrase and relate what they

have memorized, but also by helping them learn how to apply their learning in

new situations. Thus, at the application level, students must decide what

information to use so as to solve problems (Kissock and Iyortsuun, 1986, in

Azerefegen, 2008).


22

Analysis questions are questions which have higher levels which indicate

cause and effect relation. These questions are designed to help students analyze

information so as to reach a particular conclusion. Some of the key words that are

frequently found in analysis questions are: identify causes, draw conclusions,

analyze, why, determine evidence, etc. (Perrott, 1986).

Synthesis questions are also higher order questions that ask students to

perform original and creative thinking (Cooper, 1986). These questions help

students produce original communications, make predictions, and solve problems.

There are key words that can help the teacher to ask questions. To mention some,

create, plan, construct, formulate, put together, produce, design, develop,

synthesize, how can we improve, etc. (Cooper, 1986).

Another kind of higher order question is an evaluation question, which is a

higher order process and does not have a single correct answer. Evaluation

questions require the students to judge the importance of an idea, a solution to a

problem, or an aesthetic work, and also ask the students to offer an opinion on an

issue. Examples evaluation questions are: Which approach offers the best method

for addressing this problem? Which picture do you like most? There are also key

words which indicate evaluation questions. These are: judge, argue, decide,

evaluate, assess, etc.

Bloom’s taxonomy is divided into ‘lower order’ questions and ‘higher

order’ questions. Bloom describes lower order questions as those that are

comprised of knowledge, comprehension, and application while higher order

questions include analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (Nhlapo, 1998).


23

However, Bloom’s taxonomy has been criticized on the grounds that the

categories are too broad and some topics, such as personal qualities, have no space

within it (Carter, 1985, as cited in Nhlapo, 1998). Another criticism is that the

taxonomy does not distinguish between knowledge and skills, by which Carter

means that Bloom does not distinguish between knowing how to do something

and being able to do it.

Thus, to categorize teachers’ questions, it is very important to determine the

kind of thinking required on the part of the learners to answer the questions.

Lower order questions, for example, require the students to recall information,

whereas higher order questions require the pupils to manipulate information for

some purpose (Perrot, 1986). In relation to this, he further states that most

teachers’ questions call for specific fact answers or lower cognitive thought. But

higher cognitive questions have an important role to enhance students’ thinking

ability beyond recalling facts.

E. Wait-Time

An important dimension of teachers’ questioning skills is uncertain time, or

wait-time, that is, the length of time the teacher waits after asking the question

before calling on a student to answer it, rephrasing the question, directing the

question to another student, or giving the answer. That is called wait-time, and it

is amazing how few teachers use this important questioning skill. In fact, when we

consider the steps that are involved for a second language speaker in answering a

question, an argument can be made that the individual needs an even longer wait-

time than a native speaker. In fact, it seems clear that if teachers ask questions,

which they do not already know the answers, they will find it natural to wait for


24

responses, and they will need time to think about the responses before reacting to

them (Ma, 2008).

Research shows that the mean amount of time a teacher waits after asking a

question is approximately one second. Sadker and Sadker (1988) point that if the

students are not able to think quickly enough to come up with a response at this

second pace, the teacher usually repeats the question, rephrases it, asks a different

question, or calls on another student. Moreover, in the classroom, when teachers

learn to increase their wait-time from one second to three to five seconds after

asking a question, many significant changes occur in their classroom (Richards

and Lockhart, 1994).

It takes time to answer questions. Many studies show in their investigations

that students are rarely given sufficient time to formulate their answers before the

teacher repeats, rephrases, or goes on to ask another student the question. Rowe

(1986) found that teachers, on average, waited less than a second before calling a

student to respond, and that only a further second was then allowed for the student

to answer before the teacher intervened, either supplying the required response

themselves, rephrasing the question, or calling on some other student to respond.

In short, few teachers give their students enough wait-time to think about

the questions or to form meaningful answers. The average wait-time, when the

teacher waits after a question, is less than a second. There should be at least 2 to 4

seconds after any question before any student is called on to answer it. Wait-time

allows the reflective student a chance to respond and well as the impulsive student

or one who instantly knows the answer. If no one wants to tackle the question


25

after 15 seconds, leave it unanswered. Tell the students to think about the answer

and you will raise the question again at the beginning of the next class period.

F. Related Research

Research on questioning indicates that teachers, whether in content

classrooms or language classrooms ask many questions (Ellis, 1993). In their

study of six ESL teachers, Long and Sato (1983) found that 938 questions were

asked by teachers in six elementary ESL lessons. Young (1992: 90) states that,

“Persistence of questioning is a favorite teacher methodology. Roughly 60% of all

classroom talk comprises questions, and nearly all of them are asked by teachers.”

A research conducted by Ying (2011) investigated the present situation of

English teachers’ questioning in senior high school both from teachers’ and

students’ views, and to provide positive strategies. He proposes positive strategies

for teachers’ questioning that are firstly, teachers should make an effort to get

students interested in the questions. Teachers can provide different kinds of

questions just beyond students’ current level and relate the contents of questions

with students’ daily life experiences. Secondly, teachers should pay more

attention to the referential questions, guiding students to think actively and apply

them into practice flexibly to improve students’ abilities of logical thinking,

integrating analysis, and communication. Appropriate teacher questioning plays

an important role in classroom teaching. In a senior high school English

classroom, the types of questions are not only those with exact answers but also

the questions need students to think and discuss.

Another study was done by Hamiloglu (2012) on examining types of

teachers’ questions and the frequency of the use of those types of questions in the


26

EFL classroom. The findings show that in terms of the purposes teachers’

questions convey in the class, convergent questions are the most frequently used

ones with 52 in 98 questions. As these types of questions generally include

Yes/No, short answer and display type questions, over use of convergent

questions are not favored in an EFL context.

A significant number of research findings related to classroom questions

indicate that questions play a crucial role in the classroom and that teachers need

to improve their questioning strategies (Sadker and Sadker, 1982).

The above studies lack the teachers’ aims of asking such type of a question

to their students. This has guided my study in a junior high school context and

helped me justify why teachers use questions in their classrooms. In this study I

focus on finding out type of question that teachers used in daily teaching and

learning process. Soon after I find it, I quantify the frequency of which type of

questions used at the most. By doing so, I can relate the findings into the goal of

language learning in which students can

G. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework used for this study is Long and Sato’s display

and referential questions, and the classification of Brown and Wragg (1993)

related to the teacher’s question function. The first is to analyze and interpret the

nature and types of classroom questions and the different ways classifying

questions can be used. A display question is one in which the questioner knows

the answer, whereas a referential question is one in which the person asking the

question does not know the answer. Referential questions provide an opportunity


27

for students to express their ideas without any restrictions and develop the output

of the target language.

The second part of the theoretical framework of the study is based on the

classification of Brown and Wragg (1993) related to the teacher’s question

function. It is a tool to arouse interest and curiosity concerning a topic, to focus

attention on a particular issue or concept, to develop an active approach to

learning, to stimulate pupils to ask questions of themselves and others, to check

learners’ understanding, to elicit information, and to control their classrooms.

Through well-planned questioning, teachers can find out and recall not only what

students know about a topic but also can identify their needs and present gaps.


28

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This section describes the methodology used regarding the types of

teachers’ questions and students’ responses in the EFL classroom to carry out the

study. It also provides a brief description of the participants, the procedures used

to collect the data through classroom videotaping, and questionnaires. Hence, an

exploratory approach of data collection is used.

A. Nature of the Research

This study employs qualitative techniques to what types of questions are

used in EFL classes and to what extent they are used. The main data was gathered

from the videotaping of 2 student teachers. The data is the document of teachers’

talk includes the questions being asked by the teachers during the lesson.

I adopted a classroom process research because it “is concerned with the

careful description of the interpersonal events which take place in the classroom

as a means of developing understanding about how instruction and learning take

place” (Ellis, 1990). The purpose is to study a teacher’s questions in ESL

classrooms, and classroom process research aims at documenting the events that

take place in an ESL classroom. I observed and explored how teachers in junior

high school in Soe ask questions in ESL classrooms and keep records of events to

enhance my understanding of how teachers and learners “accomplish classroom

lessons” (Gaies, 1983, as cited in Nhlapo, 2008). Therefore, I used a qualitative

research as the method of inquiry to investigate my concerns.

In order to fulfill the objectives of the study, which are to assess the types of

teachers’ questions and the function of each type of question as well as the


29

responses that students give during the questioning session, data from the

observed lessons and the videotaping of teachers’ talk are analyzed. In addition to

that, the questionnaire method is used as a triangulation of the research.

B. Data Setting and Sources

The setting of this research was at Public Middle School 2 in Soe, which

was located in South Central Timor Regency. There are several reasons to conduct

the study at this school. First, the school is one of the best schools in Soe, since it

is a pioneer school that has acceleration classes. Second, I know the school, its

organization, and the students. So I will have considerable advantages with

regards to access, entry, and establishment of my role. I want to use that

knowledge, but at the same time set aside my preconceptions and stereotypes in

order to understand what happens in the EFL classroom in this specific context.

Third, considering the time limit, I have decided to conduct the study in the

school. However, I am also aware of the fact that my familiarity with the place

might influence me in the way I carry out the research and might lead me to take

some of the things at school for granted.

The research was conducted on 2nd year students of Public Middle School 2

in Soe. There are seven classes in the second year of this middle school, but I was

only recording four classes: A, B, D, and E. Each class will be recorded twice and

the recording last for 90 minutes.

The participants of this study were two English teachers and the students of

the setting above. The reason for choosing these classes was because the teachers

are available and willing to be my participants. One teacher has been teaching for

10 years, another one for 5 years.


30

C. Data Collection Instruments

To achieve the objectives of this study, the necessary data has to be

collected. To this end, two data gathering instruments were used which are

videotaping and questionnaires,. The main instrument was videotaping and while

the questionnaires were used to verify that the teachers ask questions.

1. Videotaping

A videotape is an audiovisual material which consists of images or sounds

that researchers collect to help them understand the central phenomenon under

study. It is used with increasing frequency in qualitative research, images, or

visual materials such as photographs, videotapes, digital images, paintings, and

pictures. The use of videotaping is to record all the teachers’ talk during the

lesson. The documentation of the teachers’ talk then will be transcribed regarding

all questions that the teachers’ ask.

The videotaping was conducted eight times and each last for 90 minutes

lesson. I used videotaping as the primary classroom procedure to record the way a

teacher asks questions in the ESL classroom. I videotaped two weeks lessons in

the four classes of the eighth grade; each class will have two periods of

videotaping (forty five minutes each). Since I adopted a non-participatory role, I

positioned myself at the back of the class from where I recorded the lesson.

2. Questionnaire

To increase the data obtained from videotape, questionnaires was employed.

A questionnaire is designed to catch up on the limitations caused by the recording.

The questionnaire was designed, for students. The questionnaires consist of open-


31

ended and closed-ended questions which are prepared and administered. It was

designed to measure the validity of the data gained through videotape.

In the questionnaires, I asked some questions that are closed-ended and

some that are open-ended. The open-ended responses, however, permit me to

explore reasons for the closed-ended responses and identify any comments people

might have that are beyond the responses to the closed-ended questions. The

drawback of this approach is that I will have many responses, some short and

some long to analyze (Creswell, 2012).

D. Data Analysis

To analyze the data (document of teachers’ questions,), I have completed

the following steps. First, for the videotaping, I put the data into computer files

and filed folders after transcribing the raw data into text. The second step was

related to codes, themes, or categories. Miles and Huberman (1994, as cited in

Mukminin, 2012:56) wrote, “Coding is analysis”; and Creswell (2012) states that

coding is a process of marking content of data (usually text data) with symbols,

descriptive words, or categories. I then read all transcriptions and started to code

the data that was related to the research questions. I then listed all the code words

and grouped similar codes. After that, themes were obtained by grouping similar

codes that always appear during the research.

To answer the first research question related to the types of teachers’

questions, I coded each question into display and referential question. The

analysis of the results was presented as of percentage and frequency by tabulating

the data in direction of the categories determined. It was to quantify the frequency

of which type of question used at the most. Next, to answer the function of the


32

classroom questioning, it will be analyzed according to Brown and Wragg’s

(1993) function of questioning, which is checking learners’ understanding,

eliciting information, controlling the classroom, arousing interest and curiosity

concerning a topic, focusing attention on a particular issue of concept, developing

an active approach to learning, and stimulating students to ask questions of

themselves and others.

In order to analyze the students’ responses, I would simply analyze the

responses the students give to the teachers’ questions based on three categories,

which are whether or not they give the intended answers, the way they respond to

the teachers’ questions, and the number of words they produce in answering the

questions regarding the question type. The analysis is not on the students’

physical responses because it does not give significant result to the students

language learning.

E. Data Validation and Reliability

” Reliability means dependability or consistency” (Neuman 2006:188). It

signify that the same thing reoccur at the same situation. To measure the

reliability of the data, I videotape each class twice to ensure that the thing that

happens in certain class at the first recording is repeated in the same class at the

second recording.

Meanwhile, validity means trustworthy (Neuman 2006), It suggest

truthfulness that the data being presented by the researcher fits with the actual

reality in which the research takes place. Therefore to establish the trustworthiness

of my study and to verify the accuracy of the data, findings, and interpretations

(Creswell, 1998), I used member checks in order to get participant feedback on


33

the accuracy and credibility of the data, findings, and interpretations, and

conclusions. I arranged face-to-face meetings with participants to discuss the

results of the observations.


34

CHAPTER IV

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

This chapter presents the results of the data collection through classroom

observations and questionnaires both for teachers and students. The structure of

the analysis is divided into findings and discussion sections. The data will be

analyzed in three main parts which are types of classroom teachers’ questions, the

functions of those questions, and students’ responses toward teachers’ questions.

A. Brief Summary of the Lesson

To begin the analysis, the researcher gives a brief summary of the topics of

the lessons discussed in the classrooms. There were four main topics studied in

the eight meetings, which were animals, jobs or occupations, parts of the human

body, and health. Each topic contained some sub-topics that were discussed

during the lessons. The lesson about animals was divided into physical

characteristics, places to live, and their food. The topic about parts of the human

body included parts of the body and their functions. When talking about health,

the lessons were about occupations related to health, while jobs or occupations

were divided into kinds of jobs, workplaces, and their responsibilities.

Classroom observations were conducted in classes A,B,D,and E. Each class

was observed twice. Observations 1 and 8 were in class A. The teacher discussed

types of animals, their physical characteristics, and their places to live.

Observations 2 and 4 were conducted in class B. The teacher discussed parts of

the human body and their functions. Observations 3 and 7 were in class D. The

sub-topics were about kinds of jobs, workplaces, and responsibilities of certain

jobs or occupations. Observations 5 and 6 were conducted in class E. The teacher


35

discussed types of professions related to health. Therefore, one topic was

discussed in two classes.

B. Result

1. The Type of Question

The types of teachers’ questions are classified into two main parts, which

are display questions and referential questions. Based on the classification, I then

find out which type of questions used at the most. Whether it is display or

referential question. Each type of question is presented in the table of questions’

list, which is categorized based on the form of the question and followed by an

explanation about the content of the questions.

a. Display Questions

According to Long and Sato’s (1983) classification of questions, types of

questions consist of two main sections which are display and referential questions.

Display questions refer to ones that teachers know the answer and which are

designed to elicit or display particular structures. In contrast, referential questions

refer to questions that teachers do not know the answers to, and can provide

various kinds of subjective information.

In order to make the analysis easier, each section is coded into eight sub-

sections. They are complete verbal questions, incomplete verbal questions, single

word questions, two-word questions, complete pronominal questions, incomplete

pronominal questions, Indonesian questions, and Indonesian-English mixed

questions. Below is a table that illustrates the summary of the findings.


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Table 4.1: Types of Display QuestionsNo. Types of questions Number of

OccurrencesPercentage

(%)1. Complete verbal questions 13 8.17%2. Incomplete verbal questions 1 0,62s%3. Single-word questions 6 3.77%4. Two-word questions 20 12.57%5. Complete pronominal questions 78 49.05%6. Incomplete pronominal

questions8 5.03%

7. Indonesian-English mixedquestions

9 5.66%

8. Pure Indonesian questions 20 12.57%

1). Complete Verbal Questions

The results from the observations and the videotaped transcripts show that

overall there were 159 display questions asked in four classes. From the number

of those questions, there were 13 (8.17%) complete verbal questions asked by the

teachers.

In class A, there were 5 complete verbal questions posed to the students.

One question served as a lead-in part of the lesson. For example, Can you mention

the name of the animal? One other question was asked to check the students’

knowledge on animal classification, including an example of each classification. It

can be seen in the question Can you give me an example of a wild

animal?Another was asked to check students’ progress in doing the exercise as in

Ok, can we start now? All the complete verbal questions asked here were done to

elicit already known information related to the subject matter.

For class B, the results show that the teacher only asked 2 complete verbal

questions. One question asked at the beginning of the lesson was to review the

previous week’s topic as in Can you mention a kind of job?Another question was

put forth to check students’ knowledge on the function of each part of the body. It


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was seen in the question Do you know the function based on the part of your

body?On the surface, this question seemed to require only yes/no responses from

the students. However, what the teacher really meant was to get more than just

yes/no answers. Indeed, she wanted them to mention the functions of their body

parts.

As for class D, there was a total of 5 complete verbal questions asked by the

teacher. The first question posed was to review the previous week’s topic

discussed. The teacher wanted to refresh the students’ memory by asking Can you

mention the name of the part of your body? Meanwhile, the next 3 questions were

posed as an introductory point to the topic which would be studied on that day.

For example, Can you mention what my occupation is? Can you mention the name

of a job that you know?Can you mention another job? The last complete verbal

question asked in this class was to draw students’ attention by mentioning a

student’s name as in, Christin, do you understand what I mean? This question was

meant for all the students in that class but the teacher only called Christin’s name.

In class E, there was just 1 complete verbal question asked to the students. It

was related to the topic they discussed that day. The question was She helps the

doctor in taking care of the patients, she is a …? This question was posed to elicit

students’ comprehension about people whose jobs are related to health and

medical fields.

To conclude, it was obviously seen that complete verbal questions were

mostly asked in class A and class D. There were 5 questions in each class. While

in class B and class E, the questions were only posed 1 and 2 times. However, all

the questions served the same purposes as lead-in parts to the lesson, to review the


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previous week’s topic, to check students’ knowledge on a certain topic being

discussed, and to direct students’ attention to classroom activities.

2). Incomplete Verbal Questions

The table 4.1 illustrates that from 159 display questions asked by the

teacher, there was1 (0,62%) incomplete verbal questions. Incomplete verbal

question is the questions asked as the continuation of complete verbal question.

Those questions were posed only in class A. The question was to transfer the

meaning from English into Indonesian at the word level as in In Indonesian … is?.

When asking this question, the teacher raised her intonation and the students knew

that the sentence the teacher mentioned required an answer.

3). Complete Pronominal Questions

The table illustrates that for complete pronominal question, there were 78

(49.05%) questions raised and the distributions were various in each class. There

were 12 questions posed in class A. Two questions served as a lead-in part of the

lesson about animals as in Wherecan you find a wild animal? Or Where do you

find a tame animal? Two questions were given to transfer the meaning from

English into Indonesian as in What is the meaning of a tame animal? What is a

monkey? The other 9 questions were meant to gage students’ understanding of the

topic. It was seen when the teacher provided a picture of an animal and asked the

students to answer some questions related to the picture. The questions were:What

kind of animal is this? What is the name of this animal?How many legs does this

animal have? There were also questions that were raised after the teacher read a

description and characteristics of a certain animal. For example, Itcan swim in a

river. What is the name? Or, Based on the text, how many puppies are in the text?


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Different from class A, the data from class B shows that there were 16

complete pronominal questions delivered. Some questions were asked to review

the previous week’s topic as in What is the workplace of a teacher? How about a

doctor? Some other questions were posed to check students’ knowledge of the

function of each part of the body. For example, What is the part of the body that

you use for holding something? What organ do you use for tasting food? There

were also questions that required students’ non-linguistic reactions like pointing at

the part of the body asked by the teacher. For example, Where is your foot? or

Where is your hair?

The results in class D showed that there were 23 complete pronominal

questions posed to students. Still, there were questions conveyed to review the

previous week’s lesson as in What organ do you use for seeing something? Some

others were asked to check students’ knowledge of the meaning of certain English

words in Indonesian. For example, What is the meaning of a job or profession in

Indonesian language? Or workplace, what is that?Other questions were asked to

get students’ answers about a job and its responsibilities, workplace, and function

of certain medical tools. For example, What is the workplace of students?

Christin, what is the responsibility of a teacher? What is the function of a

stethoscope? Here the teacher intentionally called Christin’s name to make sure

that she was really paying attention to the discussion.

As for class E, most of the questions asked were complete pronominal

questions. There were 26 questions. In the lesson, the teacher asked some

questions to check students’ understanding of certain English words in

Indonesian. For example, What is the meaning of health? What is the meaning of


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a pediatrician in Indonesian language? Some other questions were put forth to

check students’ knowledge of certain professions dealing with health as in,

Whatkinds of problems does a pediatrician deal with? Other questions were given

to check students’ knowledge of vocabulary items. For example, If we get a skin

disease, where should we go? How about an internal organ problem?

To briefly summarize, complete pronominal questions occurred more

frequently than complete verbal questionsin terms of the distribution of those

questions. Complete pronominal questions were asked mostly in every class,

whereas complete verbal questions were found mostly in class A. However, those

two questions served the same purposes as they had been asked.

4). Incomplete Pronominal Questions

The results for the incomplete pronominal questions show that there were 8

(5.03%) questions asked during the eight observations. The questions were only

asked in class B and class E, four questions for each class. In class B, one

question was asked to review the previous meeting’s lesson. The question was

Anda driver? Literally, the question did not seem to be a real incomplete

pronominal question, but the teacher asked this question as a continuation of a

preceding question which was What is the responsibility of a teacher? Thus, the

question Anda driver?was meant to be the same as if it was What is the

responsibility of a driver? The same pattern emerged in the three other questions

whose contexts followed the preceding questions. For example,this is found in the

questionsFor seeing something? For holding something? For walking? These

three questions followed the preceding question which was What organ do you

use for tasting food? By saying the phrases with a raising intonation, the teacher


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expected the students to understand that what she really meant was What organ do

you use for walking?

5). One-Word Questions

Referring to Table 4.2.1, one-word questions were found 6 (3.77%) times

asked by the teacher. It was found four times in class A, once in class B, and once

in class D. All the questions were in the word Next? This question served the

same purpose which was to gain students’ oral answers about the picture provided

by the teacher, or when they were discussing a certain exercise.

In asking such questions, the teacher raised her intonation to signal that she

was asking questions to the students. By doing this, she expected answer form the

students. Naturally, the students knew that when the teacher said next?, she

required responses from the students. Thus even one single word which is said by

raising intonation can be considered as a question since it also requires an answer.

6). Phrase Questions

The term phrase question is used to cover questions which have more than

one word but do not have a subject and verb or any question words like “who”,

“what”, “how”, “when”, and “where”. Some of these questions consist of two

words, and some others have three or more. When asking these questions, the

teacher raised her intonation to signal that she was questioning the students.

Overall, there were 20 phrase questions posed to the students during the lesson

time. The distribution of these questions was in class A and class B.

In class A, there were 4 questions asked in the form of a phrase. All the

questions were asked in the middle of the lesson to check students’ answers about

the exercise. The questions were asked by having them mention the name of the


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picture given to them. For example, The next picture? The next, number

4?Number 5? The same questions occurred in class B. There were 16 questions

that had no grammatical form of a question but expected a response from the

students. It was found in the questions, Number 1? Number 3?Then, some

questions had even more than three words as in Number 4 you smell with it?

Or,Number 7 you wear a watch on it?

7). Indonesian-English Mixed Questions

The results of the videotaped transcriptionsreveal that while teaching, the

teacher sometimes mixed her language in asking questions. It happened only in

class A. There were 9 instances of this type of question (5.66%). In this section,

some questions were asked to transfer the meaning from English to Indonesian

and vice versa. For example, Wild animal itu apa? Male ini artinya apa?Apa itu

physical characteristic?Pet disebut juga binatang?. One question was asked to

redirect students to correct their answer as in No. Binatang? This happened when

the teacher asked about the meaning of a wild animal and the students started to

answer anything they could guess about the word “wild” and they gave the wrong

answer. The teacher asked this question by raising her intonation to signal to her

students that they gave her the wrong answer and they needed to find the correct

meaning of the word “wild”. Thus, these questions deal with a transfer of meaning

and fixing incorrect answers.

8). Pure Indonesian Questions

The questioning session also occurred in pure Indonesian language. In four

class observations, there were 20 (12.57%) questions asked by using pure

Indonesian language.


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In class A, there were 15 pure Indonesian questions. Here, the type of

question asked most frequently by the teacher was a display question that required

mainly a yes/no response. For example, Ada banyak binatangya?Ada lagi ciri-ciri

yang lain dari binatang ini? Apalagi? There was also a question which was asked

to draw students’ attention to what had been written on the whiteboard, for

example, Ok, ada yang salah? Some questions were asked to lead students to

think deeper about the subject matter that was not presented in the text they read.

For example, Ada lagi ciri-ciri yang lain dari binatang ini? Apalagi yang lain?

In class B there were 4 questions found. The question “Kalo tooth berarti

hanya berapa jumlah giginya?” was the continuation of the question What is the

name of this picture? In that section, students were given pictures of a human

body and they were asked to answer the questions based on the number put on

each part of the body. Number 8 stood for the picture “teeth”. That is why when

the teacher asked “Number 8?” the students then answered “teeth”. The teacher

then continued to check the students’ knowledge of the singular form of the word

teeth by asking them Kalo tooth berarti hanya berapa jumlah giginya?

The question Cium sesuatu menggunakan? was asked to make sure that the

students really understood the function of the human nose in a question. The

question “Di bagian mana?A,B,C, or D? was the question that followed the

question, What is your answer? This question was put forth when the students

were asked about the exact place of a nose on a human’s face, whether it was on

A,B,C, or D. The question Tau fungsinya was asked again to check whether the

students understood what she meant when asking Do you know its function?


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In class D, there was only one question using pure Indonesian. It was used

to check whether the students got a sufficient explanation about the topic as in Ok,

jelas ya?

Thus, in the whole lesson, the teacher asked a lot of questions which served

many different purposes by using pure English, mixed English and Indonesian,

and then pure Indonesian. However, in general, whether the teacher mixed the

language or used full English when asking the students, the goal was to check

students’ understanding and knowledge of the subject matter and to elicit already

known information acquired by the students.

b. Referential Questions

It has been stated before that a referential question is one which has no right

or wrong answer because it invites students to draw answers from their

experiences and viewpoints. Teachers use referential questions because they do

not know the answers and let the students provide the information (Tsui, 1995, as

cited in Yang, 2010). Ellis (1994) also adds that referential questions are

“genuinely information-seeking”.

The results from the eight classroom observations and eight videotaping

sessions in class A,B,D, and E show that display questionswere the most

frequently asked in the classroom. There were too few referential questions asked

by the teacher during the lesson. Here, an analysis of referential questions is

presented in the table below.

Table 4.2. Referential Questions Asked in Class ANo. Question Type of

QuestionStudents’Responses

1. Ok, can you mention an example of apet in your house?

Complete verbal …

2. What is your pet in your house? Complete Cat, dog.


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pronominal3. What else? Complete

pronominalGoat. Sapi.

4. Do you have a puppy in your house? Complete verbal Yes.5. What is its name? Complete

pronominal…

6. Can you give a description of yourpuppy?

Complete verbal …

The results of this study show that in class A, from a total of 60 questions

asked in the whole lesson, there were only 10% of referential questions asked by

the teacher. From the six questions asked, there were 3 complete verbal questions

and 3 complete pronominal questions. The first question was asked to find out

whether the students had their own pets in their houses. For example, Ok, can you

mention the example of a pet in your house? The second referential question was a

repeated question of the first question, as in, What is your pet in your house? The

third question was asked to check whether the students had any pet other than

what had been mentioned before as in What else? The fourth question was asked

to gain information about whether the students had their own puppies at home as

in Do you have a puppy in your house? The fifth question was asked to know the

names of their puppies as in What is its name? The last referential question asked

in this class was to find out a description of the puppies that the students owned at

home as in Can you give a description of your puppy?

However, even though six referential questions were asked in the lesson, the

responses that the students gave were only short answers. For example, when they

were asked about the kinds of pets in their houses, the responses were cat, dog. Or

other responses were goat, sapi. Thus, the students did not give long answers to

the three referential questions asked by the teacher.


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In class B, no referential questions were asked by the teacher during the

whole lesson. Different from class B, in class D, there was 1 referential question

asked by the teacher to find out a student’s father’s job as in Bertho, what is your

father’s job? The question was a complete pronominal question. In class E, all the

questions asked were display questions. There was no referential question asked.

2. Functions of the Questions

Table 4.3.1 below shows the questioning functions to answer the research

question number 2. According to the classification of Brown and Wragg, 1993,

and Nunan and Lamb, 1996, the teacher’s questions function as a tool to arouse

interest and curiosity concerning a topic, to focus attention on a particular issue or

concept, to develop an active approach to learning, to stimulate pupils to ask

questions of themselves and others, to check learners’ understanding, to elicit

information, and to control the classrooms.


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Table 4.3: Functions of QuestionsFunctions of Questions

1. Check learners’ understanding2. Elicit information3. Control the classroom4. Arouse interest and curiosity concerning a topic5. Focus attention on a particular issue or concept6. Develop an active approach to learning7. Stimulate students to ask questions of themselves and others

*Taken from Brown and Wragg, 1993.

Here, I analyze the functions of teachers’ questions based on the types of

questions. There are the functions of display questions and the functions of

referential questions. Number 1-5 serve as the functions of display questions,

whereas numbers 6-7 serve as the functions of referential questions. The first

analysis in this section starts from the functions of display questions.

a. Functions of Display Questions

This section discuss about function of asking display question. It is divided

into checking learners understanding, arousing interest and curiosity concerning a

topic, focusing attention on a particular issue or concept, and controlling

classroom. Each function will be presented accordingly in every class.

1). Checking Learners’ Understanding

Since display questions are ones in which the asker already knows the

answer, the first function of a display question is to check learners’ understanding.

The understanding is related to the subject matter, of what is being learned about a

certain topic. In this research, the students in class A learned about animals. They

already knew about the kinds of animals and their places to live. Many of the

teachers’ questions served this first function. It is presented in the table below.


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Table 4.4: Checking Learners’ Understanding (Class A)No. Question Students’ Responses1. Ok, please mention the name of this

animal?Dog.

2. What kind of animal is this? Lizard.3. Ok, next… Bee.4. Next? Tiger5. Next? Duck, dog, kodok6. Now, please mention the name of

picture number 1?…

7. What is the name of this animal? …8. The next picture? Horse.9. The next, what is the name of this

animal?Lion

10. The next, number 4? …11. Number five? Bear.12. Six? …13. Ok, please mention the name based on

the description?Horse, zebra, lion.

14. How many legs does this animal have? Four, empat.15. What is the name of this animal? Monkey.16. It can swim in a river. What is the

name?…

17. Based on the text, how many puppiesare in the text?

Four.

18. What is its name? Robin, Rubby, Oscar, and (students Giggle)

19. The next puppy? Oscar20. What is the color of Oscar’s ribbon? …

The table shows that from the 30 display questions posed to students during

the class, there were 22 (66.7%) questions asked to check the learners’

understanding. The lesson learned in class A was about animals. The students

learned the types of animals which were wild animals and tame animals. There

were questions about the names of animals as students were given pictures of

animals. Here they were asked questions like Please mention the name of this

animal? What kind of animal is this? Another question asked to check students’

understanding of the lesson was related to the physical appearance of the animal.


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Students were given a description of a certain animal, and they were asked to

mention the name of that animal. For example, Ít can swim in a river. What is its

name?How many legs does this animal have?

The next table presents a list of questions that served as tool to check the

learners’ understanding in class B.

Table 4.5: Checking Learners’ Understanding (Class B)No. Question Students’ Responses1. What organ do you use for tasting food? …2. For seeing something? Eyes3. For holding something? Hand, nose, ears, shoulder4. For walking or running? Foot5. Number 1? Eyebrow6. Number 2? Lip7. Number 3? …8. Number 4? …9. Number 5? Moustache10. Number 6? Chin11. Number 7? Tongue12. Number 8? Teeth13. Number 9? …14. Number 10? Ear15. What is your answer? …16. Number 3? …17. Number 4 you close it when you sleep? Eye18. Number 5? Eyebrow19. Number 6 you smell with it? Hidung20. Number 7 you wear watch on it? Wrist21. The last number? …22. Can you mention a kind of job? Teacher, doctor, nurse, students

23. What is the workplace of a teacher? School

24. How about a doctor? Hospital

26. What is the responsibility of a teacher? Teach students

27. And a driver? Car


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The lesson discussed in class B was parts of the human body and their

functions. There were 27 (65.85%) questions asked to check students’

understanding. The teacher began to ask the functions of certain parts of the body

as in What organ do you use for tasting food? What organ do you use for seeing

something? What organ do you use for holding something? After that, students

were given pictures of the human body and they were asked to name each part of

the body. The teacher posed questions like Number 1? Number 2?And so on.

There were also questions asked when the teacher mentioned the function of a

certain part of the body. For example, Number 4, you close it when you sleep?

And Number 6, you smell with it? Thus, it is clear that by asking those questions,

the teacher wanted to check whether the students really understood what was

learned that day.

Another list of questions that served the same function is presented in the

table below.

Table 4.6: Checking Learners’ Understanding (Class D)No. Question Students’ Responses1. Can you mention the name of a part of your body? Hair, ears2. The next? Eyes3. What organ do you use for seeing something? Eyes4. What organ do you use for hearing something? Ears5. What organ do you use for tasting something? Tongue, mouth6. What organ do you use for holding something? Hand7. Ok Christin, do you understand what I mean? (quiet)

The seven (24.1%) questions above were asked to review the previous

material learned by the students. They were asked at the beginning of the class.

These questions were posed to check the learners’ understanding of the lesson

taught in the previous meeting. There was no time to deliver that day’s lesson

because at the time, the teacher had only 45’ teaching time from 90’ where she


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was supposed to teach. Thus, she spent the rest of her time in the questioning and

answering session.

Moreover, in class E, there were 31 display questions asked to the students.

All the questions functioned to check the learners’ understanding of the lesson.

Here, the teacher gave the students an exercise to work on. The exercise was

about medical equipment and kinds of medical experts. The questions function as

a tool to check the learners’ understanding of that lesson. The list of questions can

be seen in the table below.

Table 4.7: Checking Learners’ Understanding (Class E)No. Question Students’ Responses1. What is the meaning of health? Kesehatan2. What is the meaning of pediatrician

in Indonesian language?Ahlianak

3. What does a pediatrician deal with? Children4. Nutritionist. What is the meaning of

it?Ahligizi

5. What does a nutritionist deal with? Lack of food and vitamins(answered by the teacher)

6. What is the meaning of internist? Ahlipenyakitdalam?7. And what does the person deal with? Internal organ8. What about neurologists. What do

they deal with?Neuro problem

9. What does a psychiatrist deal with? Mental illness10. What do dermatologists deal with? Skin disease11. What problem does an optician deal

with?Eye problem

12. What do cardiologists deal with? Heart problem13. What problem does a dentist deal

with?Teeth

14. If we get a skin disease, where shouldwe go?

Dermatologists

15. If we have eye problems, whereshould we go?

Optician

16. If we have teeth problems, whereshould we go?

Dentist

17. If we have an internal organ problem,where should we go?

Internist

18. If we have a lack of food andvitamins, where should we go?

Nutritionist


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19. If we have a problem with our neuro,where should we go?

Neurologists

Students work on exercise.Ok, we start from number 1.

20. It is used to measure a patient’stemperature?

Thermometer

21. She helps the doctor in taking care ofthe patients. She is a …?

Nurse

22. Who is a nurse? …23. It is a kind of occupation. It deals

with a toothache?Dentist

24. Who is a dentist? …25. It is to inject a patient. What is that? Suntik26. It is a kind of device used to detect

detak jantung?Stethoscope

27. What is a stethoscope? …28. What is the name of this medical

tool?Stethoscope

29. What is the function of a stethoscope? …30. What is the name of this medical

tool?Injection

31. What is the function? …

The teacher tailored the questions above when she gave the lesson about

animals, parts of the body, and medical equipment. The purpose of the questions

was to check the students’ understanding. It is because the teacher wanted to test

the students’ understanding of each topic by asking related questions about what

she had explained previously. All the questions asked information related to the

worksheet the teacher discussed with the students. For some incorrect answers, the

teacher was open-minded and gave them positive responses to their answers. In

the end, although the students’ answers were not perfectly true, the teacher still

appreciated them.


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2). Arousing Interest and Curiosity Concerning a Topic

The next function of a display question is to arouse learners’ interest and

curiosity concerning a topic. It is presented in the table below.

Table 4.8: Arousing Interest and Curiosity Concerning a Topic (Class A)No. Question Students’ Responses1. Can you mention the name of an animal? Elephant, tiger, lion2. Can you mention an example of a tame animal? Lion, tiger, elephant3. Can you give me an example of a wild animal? Lion, tiger, elephant4. Where can you find a tame animal? Kebunbinatang5. Where can you find a wild animal? Forest

From a total of 30 display questions asked, there were 5(16.7%) questions

that were asked to arouse learners’ interest and curiosity concerning the topic

being discussed. Questions as listed in the table above were asked by the teacher

at the beginning of the lesson to draw students’ interest and make them curious

about what would be learned that day. They were like brainstorming questions

before leading students to the main lesson. The teacher started by giving them an

explanation about it, and she then asked them to give an example of a wild animal

and a tame animal as in Can you give me an example of a wild animal? Where can

you find a tame animal?

In class B, besides asking questions to check the learners’ understanding of

the lesson, the teacher also asked questions to arouse the learners’ interest of the

topic. The list of questions that served this function can be seen in the table below.


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Table 4.9:Arousing Learners’ Interest and Curiosity Concerning a Topic(Class B)

No. Question Students’ Responses1. Give me an example of a part of

your body?Hand, nose, ear, shoulder

2. Mention one part of your body? …3. Do you know the function based

on the part of your body?…

4. Cheek, where is your cheek? Students just point to the parts of theirbodies mentioned by the teacher.

5. Ears?6. Where are your teeth?7. Where is your nose?8. Where is your tongue?9. Where is your forehead?10. Where is your head?11. Where is your hand?12. Where are your fingers?13. Where is your thumb?15. Where is your shoulder?15. Where is your foot?

From the total of 41 display questions asked in class B, there were 15

(36.5%) questions posed by the teacher to arouse students’ interest in the topic.

She began by asking them Give me an example of a part of your body? Do you

know the function of each part of your body? There were also some questions

about parts of the body as in Whereare your teeth? Where is your nose?Other

questions like this were also asked.


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In class D, there were also questions asked to meet this function as it is

presented in the table below.

Table 4.10: Arousing Interest and Curiosity Concerning a Topic (Class D)No. Question Students’ Responses1. What is your occupation now? Student2. Can you mention what my occupation is? Teacher3. Can you mention the name of a job that

you know?Policeman, doctor, nurse

4. Can you mention another job? Housewife5. What is the workplace of students? School6. What is the workplace of a nurse? Hospital7. What is the workplace of a doctor? Hospital8. What is the workplace of a singer? ….9. Where can you see a singer? On TV yah (answered by the

teacher)10. What is the workplace of the police? S1 supermarket (others laugh)11. What is the workplace of a driver?

12. What is the responsibility of students? Study13. What is the responsibility of teachers? Mengajar14. What is the responsibility of a nurse? Melayanipasien (S2)15. What is the responsibility of a doctor? Memeriksapasien

16. What is the responsibility of a singer? Sing17. What is the responsibility of a driver? Drive18. What is the responsibility of the police? …19. Look at the picture. How many pictures

are there?12

The lesson discussed in class D was about occupation and the workplace. As

shown in the table, from 29 display questions posed in the class there were 19

(65.5%) questions posed to arouse learners’ curiosity of the topic. The teacher

started the lesson by asking an easy question as in Can you mentionwhat my

occupationis? What is your occupation now?Other questions she asked were

related to the workplace like What is the workplace of students? What is the

workplace of a nurse?Other questions also asked were about the duties of each

occupation. For example, What is the responsibility of a doctor?


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3). Focusing Attention on a Particular Issue or Concept

The function of display questions identified in class A wasto focus learners’

attention on a particular issue or concept. It can be seen in the table below.

Table 4.11: Focusing Learners’ Attention on a Particular Issue or Concept(Class A)

No. Question Students’ Responses1. What is the meaning of a tame animal? Jinak2. In Indonesian it is? Lebah3. What is a monkey? Monyet4. Oscar is a male or female? …5. Ruby is a male or female? …

There were 5 (16.7%) questions from the 30 display questions asked that

focused learners’ attention on a particular issue or concept. It is clear from the list

of questions in the table that the teacher asked those questions to focus students’

attention on the meaning of certain words in Indonesian language. Students were

indirectly asked to translate certain word meanings from English into Indonesian.

The function of display questions that could be identified in class D also

focused learners’ attention on a particular issue or concept as it is presented in the

table below.

Table 4.12: Focusing Attention on a Particular Issue or Concept (Class D)No. Question Students’ Responses1. What is the meaning of a job or occupation in

Indonesian?Perkerjaanatauprofesi

2. What is the meaning of a workplace in Indonesian? Tempatbekerja3. What is the meaning of a responsibility in

Indonesian? It means tanggung?Jawab

The table shows that there were 3 (10.3%) questions asked to focus learners’

attention on the meanings of certain words in Indonesian language. The teacher

wanted to check whether the students knew the meanings of the


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words“occupation”, “workplace”, and “responsibility” in Indonesian. For

example, What is the meaning of occupation in Indonesian?

4). Controlling Classroom

The function of controlling the classroom was only found in class D. It can

be seen in the table below.

Table 4.13: Controlling the Classroom (Class D)No. Question Students’ Responses1. Ok Christin, do you understand what I mean? Quiet

The question above was posed to control the classroom. At the time, the

students were too noisy in the classroom. They were talking with their fellow

classmates and gave no attention to what their teacher had said. The teacher asked

this question to attract the students’ attention back to the lesson, even though she

just said one student’s name. Thus, from 29 display questions asked in class D,

there was 1 (3.4%) question posed to control the classroom attention.

b. Functions of Referential Questions

1). Eliciting Information

As proposed by Brown and Wragg (1993), referential questions are

genuinely information seeking. It can be seen in the table below.

Table 4.14: Eliciting InformationNo. Question Students’

Responses1. Ok, Bertho, what is your father’s job? …2. Ok, can you mention an example of a pet in your

house?…

3. What is your pet in your house? Cat, dog4. What else? Goat, sapi5. Do you have a puppy in your house? Yes.6. What is its name? …7. Can you give a description of your puppy? …


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The table shows that when posing those referential questions, it was meant

to elicit information from the students. It was related to occupations and animals.

As stated by Long and Sato (1984, in Ellis, 2012:122), referential questions are

asked to gain information about situations, events, actions, purposes,

relationships, or properties. This type of question is asked when the asker does not

know the answer. Here, the teacher did not know about her students’ fathers’ jobs

and the kinds of pets the students had at home.

Thus, the results show that from 133 display questions posed to students in

four classrooms, 85 (63.9%) questions were asked to check the learners’

understanding, while 39 (29.3%) questions were put forth to arouse interest and

curiosity concerning a topic. One (0.8%) other question was asked to control the

classroom, while 8 (6.0%) questions were asked to focus the learners’ attention on

a particular issue or concept.

Compared to display questions, all 7 referential questions were posedmainly

to elicit information from the students. The other two functions, which are to

develop an active approach to learning and to stimulate students to ask questions

of themselves and others, were not applied in the questions.

In line with this, Nunan and Lamb (1996) state that in referring to language

teaching, teachers ask questions mainly to check learners’ understanding, to elicit

information, and to control the classroom. Above all these, checking learners’

understanding was the most preferable function that occurred in the English

classroom. It was to check whether or not the learners understood the issues or

concepts learned through particular topics in the classroom.


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However, the questions asked by the teachers do not meet the function of

focusing attention on a particular issue or concept, developing an active approach

to learning, and stimulating pupils to ask questions of themselves and others. The

only reason for that is that all questions posed by the teachers did not require a

higher thinking skill. The questions were at a superficial level of thinking and

understanding. The teachers even did not ask questions that led students to ask

questions by their own. Students just sat in the classroom and waited for their turn

to answer the teachers’ questions. Moreover, the results from the teachers’

questionnaires show three different answers of questioning functions based on the

order of importance.

The first teacher stated that classroom questioning according to its order of

importance was to improve students’ communication, attract them to think or to

pay attention to the language points, and to lead to the topic. This was to improve

students’ communications by getting them to answer the questions by using the

target language. However, from the classroom observations, this function did not

really result in getting students to communicate in the classroom using English.

They only answered the teacher’s questions in one or two words. They never

asked questions to the teacher.

The second teacher ordered its importance from to check whether students

grasp the language points, lead to the topic, attract them to think or pay attention

to the language points, up to improve students’ communication. Checking whether

the students grasp the language points was by asking them to answer particular

questions related to the topic. In fact, even though the students gave the correct

answer, they did not answer it grammatically correct. They just answered it using


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one or two words. Then, the teacher could not measure whether or not they

grasped the language points, because overall the students’ responses toward every

question consisted only of one or two words. They did not produce longer answers

as what was expected because the teacher asked too many display rather than

referential questions.

3. Students’ Responses toward Teachers’ Questions

Students’ responses were analyzed based on the number of words they

produced, the way they responded, and the correctness of their answers.

a. Number of Words Students Produced

Previous research done by Brock (1986) and Ernest (1994) showed a

positive correlation between asking referential questions and students’ production

of the target language but a negative correlation between asking display questions

and the length of students’ responses. The results from the study about students’

responses toward teachers’ questionswere based on the number of words they

produced to answer the teachers’ questions. They were also seen from whether

they gave the expected answer or not. It is presented in the table below.

Table 4.15: The Length of Students’ Responses for Different Types ofQuestions

Length ofstudents’responses

One word Two words Three words Four wordsNo. of

questions% No. of

questions% No. of

questions% No. of

questions%

Display

Referential

55

1

41.9

14.2

10

2

7.6

28.6

7

-

5.3 3

-

2.3


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From Table 4.15, it can be found that for one-word responses, there were 55

(41.9%) display questions asked, and 1 (14.2%) referential question. For two-

word responses, there were 10 (7.6%) display questions asked by the teacher, and

2 (28.6%) referential questions. Furthermore, for three-word responses, there were

7(5.3%) display questions asked by the teacher. There were no referential

questions asked by the teacher that produced three-word responses. For four-word

responses, there were 3 (2.3%) display questions asked. There were no referential

questions asked that produced four-word responses from the students.

Thus, this study reveals that when teachers asked both display and

referential questions, the students gave only short answers. They produced four

words at the most. It happened sometimes as in Can you mention the name of an

animal?It was followed by the answer Elephant, tiger, lion. Or,Can you give me

an example of a wild animal?It was answered with Lion, tiger, elephant. Another

example is Can you mention the name of a job that you know?It was answered

withPoliceman, nurse, doctor, singer. Or, Give me an example of a part of your

body. It was followed by the students’ answeringHead, nose, ears, shoulder.

Another long response given by the students was in What is the name of a

part of the body that is used for holding something?It was followed by a student’s

long response Nose, ears, shoulder, hand. This happened because he did not know

the exact answer of that question. He kept on guessing until the teacher said yes to

his answer. Another long response was in Indonesian words, so it does not count

in this study. When students produced long responses using Indonesian, they

knew the correct answers of the teachers’ questions but they did not know the

English words of the answers, or they did not know how to answer it using


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English. The teacher herself sometimes had difficulty in asking such questions to

make her students understand what she meant. At that time, she asked them a

question by using Indonesian as in Pet disebut juga binatang?It was followed by

the students’ answering Binatang peliharaan. Or in Itis like a human being,

seperti? It was answered Manusia, biasa memanjat pohon.

b. Ways of Responding

Through the classroom observations, I can find teachers directed their

questions to nearly all the students in the class. There were 78% of the students

who admitted that their teachers distributed their questions to most of the students.

These results disprove the finding that a teacher is likely to limit the questions to a

limited few (Richards, J. & Lockhart, 1994). It is generally considered desirable to

distribute questions among all students to keep them engaged in interactions and

keep them alert to respond. This result may imply that the EFL classroom

investigated is beneficial to L2 learning in this aspect.

Generally, in English classrooms, teachers let students answer their

questions in four ways: 1) nominating; 2) chorus-answering; 3) volunteering; and

4) teacher self-answering.

Table 4.16: Ways of RespondingTotal No. of Qs. Nominating In-Chorus Volunteering Self-Answer

No % No % No % No %Display 114 0 - 63 55.26 32 28.07 19 16.6Referential 4 0 - 3 75 1 25 0 -

From this table, it can be seen that chorus answering is more frequent than

other ways. This can get support from the questionnaire. Students felt more secure

if they answered a teacher’s question in-chorus. By doing this, they were not

afraid of making a mistake. The other preference was volunteering. On the


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surface, it is a good phenomenon, but because the volunteers are those who are

active or with better English proficiency, it will obstruct other students’

development. Teachers always prefer nominating. But too much nominating will

make students more passive. Sometimes, in order to save time, teachers often

answer the questions by themselves. But in this way, students will become more

dependent on teachers. They expect to receive information passively instead of

thinking about them actively. In addition, the classroom atmosphere will be blunt.

So how teachers use various question patterns properly to prompt language

learning is still a question that all teachers should pay attention to as well as to be

studied.

The results from the questionnaires (Question -- I like to answer the

questions in this way) indicates the students’ favorite way to answer questions

involved in this research: 71.25% of students (57 persons) preferred to answer

questions in chorus; 6.25% of students (5 persons) liked to be called by their

teachers; and 22.5% (18 persons) liked to be volunteers. These results show a

large number of students preferred to answer in chorus, over half of the students

who liked to answer voluntarily, and only a few of them liked to be called.

c. Correctness

Table 4.17: CorrectnessTotal No. of Qs. Correct Answer Incorrect Answer No Answer

No % No % No %Display 100 62.5 8 5 52 32.5Referential 4 457.1 0 - 3 42.8

Meanwhile, when referring to the correctness of students’ answers, the

students mostly produced correct answers or intended answers as what the teacher

expected. There were only 5 incorrect answers they gave. Four (4) incorrect


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answers were found in class A and one (1) incorrect answer was found in class B.

There were also 26 (19.8%) questions that did not get responses from students.

However, there were another 11 (8.39%) questions that required students’

participation in pointing to a part of the body mentioned by the teacher. The data

shows that 15 (11.4%) English questions were answered using Indonesian, and

there were 2 questions answered by the teacher.

There were still some questions they could not answer. The video

transcription of classroom observations showed that for the questions they could

not answer, the teacher rephrased and asked them again by using Indonesian

language, as in You smell with it.When the students did not know the answer, she

then asked them again using Indonesian

language.Ciumsesuatumenggunakan?(what organ do you use to smell

something?) Then the students’ responded by using Indonesian language too as in

Hidung (nose), or in Do you know the function based on the part of your

body?She then asked it again.Tahufungsinya?(do you its function?)Then the

students’ response was Bisa (Yes, we do). This implies the fact that when the

teacher askeda question by using Indonesian language, the students then would

answer it using Indonesian too. They unconsciously followed the teacher to

answer the question using Indonesian.

The first incorrect answer was found in the question Can you mention an

example of a tame animal? Student A said Lion, student B said Tiger, and student

C said Elephant. Instead of telling the students the correct answer, the teacher

continued by asking another question. The second incorrect answer was for the

question Next? Which refers to the picture of a frog?Student D said Duck, student


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E said Dog, and student F said Kodok. The answer “kodok” was true, but the

teacher expected the answer to be “frog”. The next incorrect answer was the

question about the description of a zebra. The students said it was a horse or lion.

The teacher then answered the question by telling the students that the answer was

zebra. The next incorrect answer was when the question was about the

responsibility of a driver; for this question the students said “car”. The last

question that resulted in an incorrect answer was the question about the workplace

of the police. There was 1 student who said “supermarket”.

To briefly summarize the results, for the students’ responses toward the

teachers’ questions, in eight meetings, most of the students’ responses were very

brief, with four words or less when display and referential questions were asked.

Longer responses of four words could only be found in a few questions.

4). Wait-Time

As literature proves, wait-time enables pupils to think and participate in

EFL classrooms. According to this study, students were not given more seconds to

think and answer the questions of their teachers. The following table shows how

many seconds were given to answer most of the questions.

Table 4.18: Wait-Time Given to Students to Answer QuestionsSeconds Number of Questions Percentage1 second2 seconds3 seconds4 seconds5 seconds

1162526-

14.3%37.8%25.3%4.1%

-

Table 4.4.2 suggests that 62 (47.3%) questions were given two seconds to

be answered by the students. 52 (39.7%) of the observed questions were given

three seconds. Moreover, there were no questions that resulted in five-word


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answers, 10 (10.7%) questions were given one second, and (4.5%) questions were

given 4 seconds to be answered by the students.

It is believed that one can learn more from having more seconds to respond

to higher order questions than lower order ones. As has been indicated before,

almost all the teachers’ questions were display questions at the level of

comprehension and knowledge questions. These types of questions may not

require more than 1 or 2 seconds. However, more time may be given to low

proficient students to think and answer questions. On top of that, teachers may ask

higher level questions like referential questions and give more time to their

students in order to make them think and respond to questions.

One of the question asked in the questionnaire were related to the amount of

time should be given that the students can think of the answer. The answer were

vary, 24 (27,2%) students answered 3 second to think while 46 (52,2%) students

wanted 5 10 second to think of their answer. The rest of the students stated that it

depends on the difficulty of the question. Mostly, the students said that the

amount of time the teacher always gives to them to think was 3 second. Their

answer was supported by the result from video tape. The average time given to the

students was 2 and 3 second. The students taught that the more time they are

given, the better their performance will be.

C. DISCUSSION

It is not surprising to see the big number of questions asked by the teachers,

since questioning is a key tool for instructing and evaluating in classrooms. This is

supported by Brualdi (1986) and Nhlapo (1998) who claim that the big amount of


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a teacher’s time is taken up by asking questions, and that almost 60% of

classroom time is spent in a question-response session.

It can be seen from the result of the questionnaire in question--- does your

teacher frequently ask question, all students said yes. They admit that their

English teachers always ask them question. This supports the obtained data from

video-tape that the teachers do ask a lot of question during their teaching time.

Meanwhile, when the students were asked about the difficulty of teacher question,

mostly said that the difficulty should be equal to their level of knowledge. They

stated that it is normal to ask such question that in the same level as their

understanding. Only few students stated that the question should be below their

level. Thus, the teacher should take into account the students’ level of knowledge

in asking questions.

1. Type of Question

Research question 1 reveals that in the lessons observed in this research,

there was a tendency for the teacher to employ more display questions (92%) than

referential questions (8.1%). The finding supports the conclusion made by Long&

Sato (1983). In Long & Sato’s study, they found that teachers use more display

than referential questions in the classroom. Therefore, Long & Sato drew a

conclusion that the second language classroom offers very few opportunities for

the learner to practice genuine communicative uses of the target language. That is

why Pica & Long (1986) drew a similar conclusion that when teachers pose too

many display questions, there will be less negotiation of meaning in classroom

settings and as a result, there will be less target language output.


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However, Freeman & Larsen 2000 state that the goal of most methods used

so far is for students to learn to communicate in the target language. Students may

produce sentences accurately in a lesson, but cannot use them appropriately when

genuinely communicating outside classroom. Relating to asking display question,

this phenomenon happens when students can answer all teachers’ questions

correctly. It is in four words at the most. They just give the intended answer

related to the lesson. No other verbal responses that the students give to promote

real English communication in the classroom.

“True communication is purposeful” (Freeman and Larsen 2000:129). This

means, the teacher can evaluate whether or not her purpose has been achieved

based upon the information she receives from her students. If the students do not

have the opportunity to provide the teacher with such feedback, then the

interaction and communication are not happen. It is found in the data that the

teachers only ask such rhetorical questions to the students. When the teacher asks

“What is the example of wild animal?” and the students’ answer is “lion” then

the exchange of information is not really communication, even though they use

English in doing so.

It is inferred from the obtained data that display questions require short

answers containing small pieces of information, for example at the word level, for

word pronunciation and meaning, and for comprehension checks. It serves to

facilitate the recall of information and check the understanding of knowledge

rather than to generate students’ ideas and classroom communication. “Display

questions tend to elicit short answers, learners supply the information for didactic

purposes only, they would have less communicative involvement in producing a


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display response, and thus less motivational drive for using the target language.”

(Chaudron, 1988).

It is generally believed that referential questions tend to generate longer

responses from students than display questions (Nunan, 1991). Brock (1986)

found that the learners responded with significantly longer and more syntactically

complex utterances to referential questions than to display questions. When

teachers use referential questions, students are more likely to produce complex

target language structures and their output is more likely to be produced in

naturalistic settings. Learners will attain a much higher proficiency. Therefore,

teachers are expected to employ more referential questions.

However, in the current study, this was not the case. In the lesson, display

questions resulted in a much longer response time than referential questions.

There are a number of reasons for this result. First, referential questions might

have been too advanced for these particular students, since they did not get much

exposure to English outside the classroom. Second, the students simply did not

understand the questions or they did not even realize that they had been asked a

question. The third reason is, for teachers, by asking display questions they can

easily check students’ understanding of the texts. Referential questions need

students to think and discuss which will take a lot of time. However, because of

teaching schedules, teachers cannot spend much time on class discussions. The

fourth is for students, they just want to answer questions correctly. Display

questionshave exact answers that they can easily find in books or previous

memory. Maybe students are used to answering display questions. Meanwhile,


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referential questions do not have an exact answer, which will take them a lot of

time to think and discuss. Students may be lazy to use their minds to think.

Therefore, the case is eliciting language from the learners. It is not merely

about asking display or referential questions to get learners to speak, it is about

getting them to speak by using the target language. As the participants in this

study are in 8th grade of junior high school, some factors related to their

psychological situations should be considered. Li and Hou (2004) state that

English becomes a headache to a large number of learners who suffer repeated

frustration and in learning it, which is, in turn, harmful to their self-esteem and

confidence. Chuska (1995) also mentions that when questions such as those

mentioned (referential) are asked, students will usually not know how to respond

and may answer the questions incorrectly. Thus, their feelings of failure may

cause them to be more hesitant to participate in class.

Additionally, in terms of question types, this study suggests that display

questions play important roles in enhancing psychological support and facilitating

the cognitive process for EFL learners at the intermediate stage. Meanwhile, in

relation to students’ engagement in the learning process, the study reveals that

most of the students do participate in classroom activities such as responding to

teacher question, working in group, and voluntarily writing their answer on the

board. Since students’ engagement requires motivation (Barkley 2010), it can be

seen that students have great motivation in learning English through the topic

being discussed.

In addition to that, when such display question is related to the criteria of

good questioning proposed by Clark and Starr 1991 it can be said that that


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question is effective considering the way itis asked, it is adaptable to the students’

age, and it is also appropriate to its purpose. A successful question should be

asked definitely in simple, clear, and straightforward English that the students can

understand. In all questions being asked, the teacher use simple English that the

students can easily understand what she means. It is proved when the students

mostly can answer the questions correctly.

Another criteria is good question is adapted to learners’ ages, abilities, and

interests. There is no good point in embarrassing or frustrating students by asking

those questions they cannot answer. In here, all teachers’ questions are balanced

with students’ ages and abilities in using English. The teachers do not ask thought

provoking questions that make students struggling to think of the answer. All

questions are on the lesson the students had learnt before.

One last criterion is the questions that appropriate to its purpose. In asking

display question, the purpose is to elicit language and knowledge from students.

Display question is used to check students understanding about the lesson. The

students mostly use English in responding to teachers’ questions. They answer the

questions as the realization of their knowledge on the lesson or the topic they have

studied.

.2. Function of Question

As for research question 2, the results show that five functions are found in

this study, and they are consistent with the literature reviewed by the researchers.

These five functions which emerged from the data in this study were mostly in

line with the function categories presented by Nunan and Lamb (1996) and others.

It is also found that there is some relationship between the types and the functions


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of teacher questions. For example, referential questions cannot be used to control

the classroom. This is because referential questions ask for information that the

teacher does not know (Lynch, 1991). It requires interpretation and judgment on

the part of the person whom it is directed towards (Shomossi, 2004). Therefore, to

control the classroom it does not need a high order thinking question (referential

question). This specific function of teacher questions is simply for organizing and

controlling the class to enable the teaching to be conducted smoothly.

According to Richard & Lockhart (1994:185), questions may “encourage

students to think and focus on the content of the lesson”. Questions can enable

teachers to check students’ understanding and mastery of grammar and the content

of texts. In a word, enhancing students’ language learning is one of the important

functions of teacher questioning. This study also concludes that the main aim of

teachers’ questioning is to improve students’ language learning.

3. Students’ Responses

For the research question 3, the results of this study reveal that the use of

either display or referential questions does not really provoke students to give

long answers by using the target language. The longest answer form the students

was four words. Other responses were in the range of one up to three words. The

reason is that the display and referential questions asked by the two teachers in the

whole class teaching portion of this study were generally to check students’

understanding of the lesson and elicit brief information.

It is worth mentioning that the questions asked do not determine the number

of student responses but the way the teacher raises the questions and responds to

the students’ answers. Therefore, the researcher thinks that both teacher question


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types are useful in EFL classrooms. It would be risky to generalize the idea that

display questions are useless and they elicit only short answers, or referential ones

are useful for language learning and they produce long answers. Instead, their use

should be determined by students’ levels, lesson objectives, and student learning

strategies.

Regarding the way students respond to the teachers’ questions, chorus

responses were the most frequent way of responding that occurred during the

observations. The teachers asked questions first and chorus responses followed.

Despite the fact that chorus responses facilitate teachers to check whether their

students have understood the lesson or not, it cannot be taken as a testifying

device of their lessons. That is because teachers cannot know whether their

students acquire a certain content of the lesson or not.

Teachers can allow the whole class to provide responses or chorus answers

for different purposes. One of the main purposes is to encourage students to

practice a new language without being fearful of making mistakes. The other is to

save time. By getting students to answer in-chorus, a teacher can get more time to

continue the lesson.

It is clearly seen from the result of video-tape that in every question being

asked, the students always answer the question. The same result obtained from the

questionnaire. In question—how often do you answer the question, mostly the

students said that they always answer the question. Only a few of them said that

they rarely answer the question. This could not be clearly noticed during the

classroom observation because the students always answer in-chorus. Thus, it was

difficult to check who answered the question and who did not.


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As for question—when you cannot answer teacher’s question, what do you

think you teacher should do?, the answer was surprising because mostly the

students said that the teacher should ask the other friends. However, in the real

practice of teaching, the teacher did not nominate or point certain students to

answer her question. She distributed the question to the whole class, and the

students answered in-chorus. When they were asked about the wrong answer, the

students gave two answers. Some students hoped the teacher to immediately

correct their mistake when they gave the wrong answer and some other preferred

the teacher to give no response to the incorrect answer.

Additionally, according to the data obtained from the observation, 16.6% of

the total questions were answered by the teachers themselves. Teachers answered

their questions because they did not want to give more time to their students to

think and answer. However, in this way, students will become more dependent on

teachers. They will expect to receive information passively instead of thinking

about it actively.Besides, when giving students some time to think of the answer,

the silence tends to break up the flow of the lesson. Students’ attention gets

distracted and it is hard to pick up the pace again once it is lost (Nunan& Lamb

2000).

Another relevant issue in this study is the distribution of questions. Though

it is good to distribute questions among all students rather than limit them to a

select few, some students still more likely to be called to speak than others. They

will learn more if they are actively engaged in discussion than if they sit passively.

It will help them keep attentive in the lesson.


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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

This section describes the summary of the research discussed in detail

earlier in relation to the objectives of the study. It also indicates the findings

drawn from the summary of the research. Moreover, based on the findings, it

suggests recommendations that can help improve language teaching and learning

in EFL classrooms.

The purpose of this research was to identify the types of questions teachers

most commonly use and the function of questioning used in the EFL classroom.

Therefore, the research project endeavored to identify the types of questions

teachers asked in the classroom, the function of the questions, and the students’

responses toward the questions.

A. Conclusion

Since teachers’ questioning is one of the keys to obtain a successful

teaching learning process, this study was set out to identify the types of questions

asked at the junior high school level. In this case, classes A, B, D, and E of Public

Middle School 2 in Soe were chosen for observation. The categorization of

question types is based on Long and Sato’s (1984) conceptualization, which are

display and referential questions. As for the classification of questioning function,

it is based on Brown and Wragg’s (1993) classification. It is checking learners’

understanding, eliciting information, controlling the classroom, arousing interest

and curiosity concerning a topic, focusing attention on a particular issue or

concept, developing an active approach to learning, and stimulating students to

ask questions of themselves and others. Meanwhile, students’ responses toward


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teachers’ questions were analyzed by looking at the number of words produced by

the students in answering the teachers’ questions, the correctness of their answers,

and the ways they answered the questions.

So far, the types of questions, questioning function, and students’ responses

have been indicated based on the data obtained from the observed lessons and the

questionnaires administered to teachers and students. As it has been stated in the

analysis, the teachers asked on an average, 25-40 questions per period. It may be

possible to say that most of the lesson time is devoted to giving responses to the

teachers’ questions.

This study has found out that in the question type, display questions (92%)

were highly uttered by the teachers rather than referential questions (8.1%). The

teachers tend to use display question in their teaching practice. There are three

reasons to use more display question than referential one. Display question is

effective considering the way it is asked, it is adaptable to the students’ age, and it

is also appropriate to its purpose. A successful question should be asked definitely

in simple, clear, and straightforward English that the students can understand.

Another criteria is good question is adapted to learners’ ages, abilities, and

interests. One last criterion is the questions that appropriate to its purpose. In

asking display question, the purpose is to elicit language and knowledge from

students.

These two types of questions were divided into complete verbal questions,

incomplete verbal questions, complete pronominal questions, incomplete

pronominal questions, single-word questions, two-word questions, Indonesian

questions, and mixing Indonesian-English questions. In the display questions, the


77

biggest category of questions asked by the teachers was complete pronominal

questions (49.05%), which are questions in the form of WH questions.

Meanwhile, for 7 (8.1%) referential questions, there were 4 complete pronominal

questions and 3 complete verbal questions posed by the teachers.

This study has also found that generally the purposes of teachers’

questioning are to elicit information from students, check students’ understanding,

engage students to the lesson given, encourage students’ participation, stimulate

and/or maintain students’ interest, and manage and/or control the classroom.

However, as the goal of learning English in a junior high school context is

eliciting language from the learners, it is indeed all the functions related to

eliciting information, checking students’ understanding of the lesson being taught,

and encouraging them to participate more in the classroom were highly distributed

through the questions posed by the teachers.

The results of this study suggest that questions take a significant role in

achieving a successful teaching learning process. Since the learners at the junior

high school level have limited competency of vocabulary and thought, the way

teachers pose the questions contributes to learners’ lengthy language output or

responses and more communicative classrooms. Concerning students’ responses,

the findings confirm that when display and referential questions were asked, the

students’ responses tended to be very brief (mostly four or less). Therefore, it may

not be the questions asked that determine the number of students’ responses, but

how the teacher responds to the students’ answers.

This study also reveals that in terms of correctness, mostly the students gave

correct answers to the teachers’ questions. It is because the questions given by the


78

teachers were based on the lessons they studied and discussed before, so the

students did not need to think in great depth in order to produce the answers. They

could easily get the answers from the texts and handouts they had.

Regarding the way to answer the questions, the data analysis shows that the

students tend to answer in-chorus since they do not need to worry about making

mistakes. However, in order to save time, there were still many times that the

teachers answered the questions themselves. This was due to the amount of time

the teachers gave to the students to think of their answers was too limited.

Concerning wait-time, teachers provided not more than two seconds to students to

answer their questions. For some questions, the time given was four to five

seconds to be answered. Even after the questions were answered, adequate time

was not given for others to think about the answers given so that they could

suggest comments. Consequently, the students did not have enough time to think

about the answers they could give at the time.

Moreover, there are still some questions answered by the teacher

themselves. The teachers do that because they do not want to spend more time on

students thinking of the answer. The silence tends to break up the flow of the

lesson. However, by doing this, students will become more dependent on the

teachers. They will expect to receive information passively instead of thinking

about it actively.

B. Recommendations

Based on the findings of the research and the conclusions reached, the

following recommendations are made. Questions that require only remembering

of facts from pupils should be minimized because such questions limit students to


79

explain their ideas using English in the classroom. It is advisable that teachers

should give wait-time depending upon the purposes of questioning, because wait-

time provides students with adequate time to think and answer the questions.

Questions should be distributed to students in different ways. Teachers can

give their students equal opportunities to answer questions. However, they should

at the same time make sure that they are fulfilling the desired aims of using

questions in the language classes.

Planning questions is also very important in the EFL classroom. Hence,

teachers should prepare their questions before they come to the classroom. If they

do prepare questions, they can minimize making mistakes in formulating

questions and would be clear about the purposes of asking questions. Above all,

planning questions may help teachers to ask the various types of questions in

question and answer exchanges in the EFL classroom.

The researcher believes that questions must be given emphasis in the

English language. Methodology, courses, the types of questions, questioning

functions, their uses in the English classroom, ways of preparing questions, the

purposes of questions in the class, etc., should intensively be given and practiced

by the teachers.

Therefore, the training that incorporates questions and questioning strategies

and questioning functions can help the teachers to be familiar with different kinds

of questions and their various uses in the language classes. It can also help the

teachers to discover better ways to make use of questions in teaching the target

language.


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As questions are important in teaching a language, it is essential to conduct

further studies on classroom questioning to investigate the problems in detail and

their solutions in relation to the language classrooms. Thus, looking into

classroom questioning in particular can provide useful information concerning the

problems related to classroom questions and the effectiveness of teachers’

questions that are planned for a lesson. It is possible to see if they are appropriate

for the course objectives and students in the class.

However, this study still has limitations. The first limitation is the number

of schools observed. A wider range of data collected may be more beneficial for

the reliability of further studies. The second limitation is on the time allocation.

There is a limit of time for the researcher in doing the research. Therefore, having

a longer time allocation than the time in this study will be more valuable. The

third is on the analysis since it discusses the eighth subsections of display and

referential question on the surface level only without giving any deeper

explanation about what those really mean. These can become things to consider in

doing a research on questioning.

Finally, the researcher recommends potential researchers to study the use of

questions, the questioning strategies, and the purposes of questions in relation to

language teaching. In addition, the curriculum of secondary school teachers’

training colleges and their implementations should be assessed with respect to the

types of questions and questioning strategies. Therefore, this study is not a

complete one; it is considered essential that more research be conducted on the

problem, in order to come up with a reliable solution.


81

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APPENDICES

Appendix 1

Display Question in Class A

No. Question Students’ Responses

1. Can you mention the name of animal? Elephant, tiger, lion.

2. Can you give me the example of wild animal? Lion, tiger, elephant.

3. Where will you find a wild animal? Forest.

4. What is the meaning of tame animal? Jinak.

5. Can you mention the example of tame animal? Lion, tiger, elephant.

6. Uh, where do you find tame animal? Kebun binatang

7. Ok, please mention the name of this animal? Dog.

8. What kind of animal is this? Lizard.

9. Ok, next… Bee.

10. In Indonesian is? Lebah.

11. Next? Tiger.

12. What is monkey? Monyet.

13. Next? Duck, dog, kodok

14. Now, please mention the name of picture

number 1?

…

15. What is the name of this animal? …

16. The next picture? Horse.

17. The next, What is the name of this animal? Lion

18. The next, number 4? …

19. Number five? Bear.

20. Six? …

21. Ok, please mention the name based on the

description?

Horse, zebra, lion.

22. How many legs of this animal? Four, empat.

23. What is the name of this animal? Monkey.


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24. It can swim on the river. What is the name? …

25. Based on the text, how many puppies in the

text?

Four.

26. What is the name? Robin, Rubby, Oscar, and

( students Giggle)

27. The next puppy? Oscar

28. Oscar is male or female? …

29. Ruby is male or female? …

30. What is the color of oscar’s ribbon? …

Question Asked by Mixing English and Indonesian (Class A)


1. Wild animal itu apa? Binatang darat, binatang

hutan.

2. No. Binatang??? Liar.

3. Snake itu termasuk dalam binatang? liar.

4. Apa itu physical characteristic? …

5. What is the name of anak anjing yang pertama? Robin

6. Male ini artinya apa? …

7. It likes human being. Seperti? Manusia

8. Pet disebut juga binatang? Binatang peliharaan.

9. Place or habitat ini artinya apa? Tempat hidup binatang

tersebut (answered by the

teacher).

Questions Asked by Using Pure Indonesian. (Class A)


1. Ada banyak binatang ya? …

2. Binatang liar atau binatang apa? Buas


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3. Ada lagi ciri-ciri yang lain dari binatang ini? Ada.

4. Punya ekor tidak? Punya.

5. Apa lagi yang lain? Telinga.

6. Sebutkan cirri-ciri yang lain selain itu? Punya dua kaki dan dua

tangan.

7. Apa lagi? Punya telinga.

8. Biasanya dia makan? Pisang.

9. Ok, ada yang salah? …

10. Anak anjing dalam bahasa Inggris disebut? Dog

11. Sebutkan cirri-ciri robin? …

12. Berikut lagi masih ada? …

13. Ayam betina disebut? …

14. Jantan? …

15. Anak ayam kita sebut? …


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Appendix 2

Display Question Asked in Class B

No. Question Students’ ResponsesStudents are given pictures of human face andthey are asked to answer the question of part ofhuman face.

1. Give me the example of part of your body? Hand, nose, ear, shoulder2. Mention one part in your body? …3. Do you know the function based on the part of

your body?…

4. what organ do you use for tasting food? …5. For seeing something? Eyes6. For holding something? Hand, nose, ears,

shoulder7. For walking or running? Foot8. Number 1? Eyebrow9. Number 2? Lip10. Number 3? …11. Number 4? …12. Number 5? Moustache13. Number 6? Chin14. Number 7? Tongue15. Number 8? Teeth16. Number 9? …17. Number 10? Ear18. what is your answer? …19. Number 3? …20. Number 4 you close it when you sleep? Eye21. Number 5? Eyebrow22. Number 6 you smell with it? Hidung23. Number 7 you wear watch on it? Wrist24. The last number? …25. Cheek, where is your cheek? Students just point part of

their body that mentionedby the teacher.

26. Ears?27. where is your teeth?28. where is your nose?29. where is your tongue?30. where is your forehead?31. where is your head?32. where is your hand?33. where is your fingers?34. where is your thumb?35. where is your shoulder?


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36. where is your foot?No. Question to Review Last Week Material Students’ Responses37. Can you Mention kind of job? Teacher, doctor, nurse,

students.38. What is the work place of teacher? School

39. How about doctor? Hospital.

40. What is the responsibility of teacher? Teach students.

41. And driver? Car.

Question Using Pure Indonesian (Class B)

No. Question Students’ Responses1. Kalo tooth berarti hanya berapa jumlah giginya? 1, 2.

2. Cium sesuatu menggunakan? Hidung.

3. Di bagian mana? A,B,C, or D? …

4. Tau fungsinya? …


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Appendix 3

Display Question in Class D


1. What is the meaning of job or occupation in

Indonesia?

Perkerjaan atau profesi

2. What is your occupation now? Student

3. Can you mention what is my occupation? Teacher

4. Can you mention the name of job that you

know?

Policeman, doctor, nurse.

5. Can you mention the other job? House wife.

6. What is the meaning of workplace in

Indonesia?

Tempat bekerja

7. What is the workplace of students? School.

8. What is the workplace of nurse? Hospital.

9. What is the workplace of doctor? Hospital

10. What is the workplace of singer? ….

11. Where will you see the singer? On TV yah (answered by

the teacher)

12. What is the workplace of police? S1 supermarket (others

laugh)

13. What is the workplace of driver?

14. What is the meaning of responsibility in

Indonesia? Means tanggung?

Jawab

15. What is the responsibility of students? Study

16. What is the responsibility of teachers? Mengajar

17. What is the responsibility of nurse? Melayani pasien (S2)

18. What is the responsibility of doctor? Memeriksa pasien

19. What is the responsibility of singer? Sing


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20. What is the responsibility of driver? Drive

21. What is the responsibility of police? …

22. Look at the picture. How many pictures are

there?

12

No. Question to Review Last Week Material Students’ Responses

23. Can you mention the name of part of your body Hair, ears..

24. The next? Eyes.

25. What organ that you used for seeing

something?

Eyes.

26. What organ that you used for hearing

something?

Ears.

27. What organ that you used for tasting

something?

Tongue, mouth.

28. What organ that you used for holding

something?

Hand.

29. Ok Christin, do you understand what I mean? (quiet)


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Appendix 4

Display Question Asked in Class E

No. Question Students’ Responses1. What is the meaning of health? Kesehatan2. What is the meaning of pediatrician in

Indonesia?Ahli anak

3. What is the problem to deal with pediatrician children4. Nutririonist. What is the meaning of it? Ahli gizi5. What is the problem to deal with nutritionist? Lack of food and vitamins

(answered by the teacher)6. What is the meaning of internist? Ahli penyakit dalam?7. And the problem to deal with? Internal organ8. What about neurologists. The problem to deal

with is?Neuro problem

9. What is the problem to deal with psychiatrist? Mental illness10. What is the problem to deal with

dermatologistsSkin disease

11. What is the problem to deal with optician Eye problem12. What is the problem to deal with cardiologists? Heart problem13. What is the problem to deal with dentist? Teeth14. If we get skin disease, where should we go? Dermatologists15. If we have eyes problem, where should we go? optician16. If we have teeth problem, where should we go? dentist17. If we have internal organ problem, where

should we go?Internist

18. If we have lack of food and vitamins, whereshould we go?

Nutritionist

19. If we have problem with our neuro, whereshould we go?

Neurologists

Students work on exerciseOk, we start from number 1.

20. It is used to measure a patient temperature? Thermometer21. She help the doctor in taking care the patients,

she is a?Nurse

22. Who is nurse? …23. It is a kind of occupation. it deals with

toothache?Dentist

24. Who is a dentist? …25. It is to inject the patient. What is that? Suntik26. It is a kind of device used to detect detak

jantung?Statescope

27. What is statescope? …28. What is the name of this medical tool? Statescope29. What is the function of statescope? …30. What is the name of this medical tool? Injection


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31. What is the function? …


94

Appendix 5

Referential Question Asked in Class A.

No. Question Students’ Responses1. Ok, can you mention the example of pet in your

house?…

2. What is your pet in your house? Cat, dog.3. What else? Goat. Sapi.4. Do you have puppy in your house? Yes.5. What is the name? …6. Can you give the description of your puppy? …

Referential question asked in class D, Bertho, swhat is your father’s job?.


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Appendix 6

Student’s Questionnaire

Dear Student,This questionnaire is designed to know the types of questions English languageteachers ask and identify the Function of the questions. It is believed that yourresponse would help the researcher to get the necessary information.Thank you for taking your valuable time to fill this questionnaire.Part one: put a tick mark” in the boxes give below1. Sex : Male Female2. Age : __________

1. Does your English teacher frequently ask questions?A. often B. little

2. Do you care about the English teacher’s questioning way?A. yes B. a little C. no

3. Do you think English teacher should take care of the students at all levelswhen questioning?

A. yes B. no C. indifferent4. Do you think how much time English teacher should give you to prepare for

answering question?A. 3 second B. 5 second C. 10 secondD. more E. depending on difficulty F. indifferent

5. The time English teacher frequently lets you to think teacher’s question is?A. 3 second. B. 5 second. C. 10 secondD. more E. depending on difficulty

6. If English teacher gives you enough time to consider question carefully, yourperformance will be?

A. better B. worse (because of nervousness) C. hard to answer7. When you can’t answer teacher’s question, the way teacher will deal with is?

A. to ask others B. to provoke thoughts or reduce difficulty C. to givemore time

8. Difficulty of question, you think, should be?A. Slightly higher than your level B. equal to your level C.

below your level9. Do you care about English teacher’s evaluation in your answer?

A. yes B. no C. hard to answer10. For wrong answer, you hope?

A. to correct at once B. to direct with smile and patience C. to have noresponseD. to correct with covert way E. to be indifferent

11. Do you think the praise your English teacher give due to your good answeris?

A. very important B. not important C. indifferent12. You think the way your English teacher questions you in classroom is?


96

A. very good B. normal C. not good D. hard toanswer13. Do you understand every questions asked by your teacher?

A. Always B. Sometimes C. Rarely14. How often do you answer the questions?

A. Always B. Sometimes C. Rarely15. I like to answer the question in this way.

A. Volunteer B. Nominated C. In-chorus


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Appendix 7

Teacher’s Questionnaire

Dear teacher,

I am conducting a research on the types of teacher’s questions and function of thequestions in Junior High School English classrooms. Hence, I politely requestyou to give your responses. Thank you for your help

Part one: Information About yourselfInstruction: To respond the following items dealing with yourself, put a tick mark‘ ’ in the boxes provided.

Sex: MaleFemale

Education Background:Experience in teaching Language:5 yrs 6-10 yrs Above ten yrsTotal number of students in the class____________

1. Do you know why you ask question?2. Do you count the number of questions you ask during one period of lesson?

Please explain.3. What do you think the main aims of teacher questioning? You can answer

accordingly.A. Check whether students grasp the language pointsB. Lead to the topicC. Attract them to think or pay attention to the language pointsD. Improve students’ communicationE. Provide opportunities to speakF. Control the classroom discipline

4. What type of question do you always ask at the beginning of the lesson?Yes/no question or W-H question?.

5. How often do you challenge students by asking question that arouses theirparticipation in the lesson?

6. Do you want them to know more?7. How often do you ask question that checks your students understanding of the

lesson?8. Do you get all students involve in class discussion?9. How often do you ask question that provokes students’ critical thinking?10. Do you ask a variety of question—recall Vs thought questions?11. How much time do you hope your students to response to your question?12. Which way do you prefer your students to answer the question?

A. Answer togetherB. By volunteerC. Discuss first and then answer


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teacher question in the junior high school … · table 4.11 focusing learners’ attention on...

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