Types and Functions of Teachers’ Questions During Knowledge Construction in EFL Classroom Discourse

Abstract

This paper focuses on one of the most prevalent interactional features of classroom discourse which is teacher question. A bulk of research has attributed the preponderance of display questions to the pedagogic goals of constructing, eliciting, and evaluating learners’ knowledge and/or to the learners’ limited language capacity. This study, therefore, aimed to examine if experience can make a difference in the types and functions of teachers’ questions during the knowledge construction phase (KCP), whose major pedagogic goal revolves around learners’ display of knowledge, in classes with low language proficiency learners. To this aim, two experienced and two novice teachers’ EFL classes with elementary learners were recorded for four 2-h sessions. Transcription and discourse analysis of the data using Long and Sato’s (1983) taxonomy showed that experienced teachers managed to offer not only the intended but also the emergent affordances for learners and learning through deploying a variety of questions serving different functions in KCPs. The findings of this study can substantiate Walsh and Mann’s (ELT Journal, 69(4), 351–362, 2015) proposal for a data-led dialogic reflective practice and help teachers foster their classroom interactional competence.