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
YesNo, 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.
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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
