OBSERVE 7.

THE TEACHER’S QUESTIONS

Questioning is an important strategy that teachers use for a variety of reasons such as checking
comprehension, receiving feedback, involving students in the lesson, motivating, encouraging students
to think etc. Questioning is a key in developing classroom interactional competence; however, if the
right questions are not asked it can go no more than a daily chit chat. What’s more, if the teacher sticks
with display questions (the questions that the teacher knows the answer to) which requires short
answers but doesn’t involve much thinking, the lesson turns into a teacher-centered one, where the
teacher controls all the interaction and responsible for all the questions. Therefore, it is essential that
we vary the types of questions so that they involve referential questions (the questions that the teacher
doesn’t know the answer to). According to the Bloom’s taxonomy we can ask seven types of questions
(Brown, 2007):

1. Knowledge questions: recalling or recognizing information (What is the name of the postman?,
Who is helping the police?, Is it a beautiful place? …)
2. Comprehension questions: interpreting, extrapolating (explain, define, summarize, use your
own words …)
3. Application questions: using the information in new situations (How can you use it in this
situation?, What do you think would happen …? …)
4. Inference questions: the answer cannot be found directly in the learning material. (How?,
Why?, What kind of conclusions can you draw?, What do you understand from this statement?
….)
5. Analysis questions: requires the ability to break the information down into parts and relate it to
the whole. (compare, contrast, categorize, differentiate, group … What is the message given? In
what ways Snow White is different from the Queen?)
6. Synthesis questions: combining parts into a new whole (combine, develop, chose, solve … How
can you solve his problem? What would you do if you were in his shoes? ….)
7. Evaluation questions: making judgments according to a criteria and explaining/discussing why.
(effective-ineffective, useful- not useful …) (evaluate, select, decide which .., which one is more
favorable?, which one would you chose, why? …)

Task Objective:

Our aim, in this task, is to pay attention to the types of questions the teacher asks and their purposes. In
addition, we will observe and decide how much the teacher’s questions affect the students’
participation.

Procedure:

Before the Lesson:

Talk to your cooperating teacher and learn about the importance s/he gives to questioning. Ask him/her
the purpose(s) of questioning. Why is s/he asking questions?
During the Lesson:

Note down each question the teacher asks in the lesson, decide its type and purpose by using Table 9.
Then, discuss the quality of student responses (one word, short answer, discussion, states an opinion ..)
to the question.

After the Lesson:

Reflection: Discuss your ideas about the possibility of using high cognitive level questions in our
classrooms. Is it doable? What factors are effective/important for us to use higher order questioning?
What could a teacher do/need to raise the bar to the intended level (developing higher order thinking
skills and fluent language production)?

Reference:

Brown, H.D. (2007). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy. (3rd edition).
White Plains, NY: Pearson Longman.
Table 7. The teacher’s questions: Note down each question the teacher asks, mark its type and write the teacher’s purpose.

Question Type of question Purpose

(Examples of questions) Knowl. Comp. App. Infer. Analys. Synt Eval.