57 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’ Responses
1. 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 Information
No. Question
Students’ Responses
1. 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, dog
4.
What else? Goat, sapi
5.
Do you have a puppy in your house? Yes.
6. What is its name?
… 7.
Can you give a description of your puppy? …
58 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.
59 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
60 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
