Sheila BoteinM.A.TESOL Conference

ay 4, 2007


What Questions do you Have? Developing an Inductive Questioning Strategy

Examples of Greg P. Kearsley’s types of questions (used by Long &Sato) with samples from my tutorial transcripts.

Type / Example / Description
Referential / T: If you cared about passing your driver’s test, you’ll write about it in an interesting way. If you write about something you find boring…what’s a good example of something you find boring? / Epistemic
Purpose: to acquire information.
Display / T: And what does she think is important for success?
S: what’s important ?…
T: Just look in the very last paragraph.
S: They give us a way to live with ourselves. / Epistemic
Also known as “test” or “known information” questions. Questioner is seeking a particular answer.
Rhetorical / S: Why climb stairs? Is hard. How about can I say she wants to pass a test? She wants to give herself a choice like some people like to work by themselves. / Epistemic
Asked for effect only – no answer expected from listener
Procedural*
(from Debra Myhill) / T: And was there a question from the teacher that you were supposed to answer? / Epistemic
Confirmation / T: I think you have a choice. You have one big paragraph now. You can make it into three or two.
S: Oh, I see. I could make it here? And here? / Echoic
Complete or partial repetition of previous speaker’s utterance
Clarification / S: He thinks the service is….
T; Does he think the service is good? Does he think it is…. / Echoic
Questioner may add new info or recodes previous info.
Comprehension / S: Does I’m OK you’re OK mean like this?
T: You make the listener think you are actually fine. / Echoic
Questioner checks understanding

When I want to develop inductive questions:

  1. Begin by assessing the context. What are the teaching goals? What kinds of critical thinking do I want students to develop? What skills? What kind of practice do they need?
  2. Is there data that students have generated that I can use? Do I need to clean that data up?
  3. What is the first question? What are good follow-up questions?
  4. Add the questions to the lesson plan.
  5. After the class, evaluate. Were the students engaged? Did they respond as predicted? Were there novel responses?

Selected References

Brock, C.A.(1986). The effects of referential questions on ESL classroom discourse. TESOL Quarterly (20)1, 47-59.

Eodice, M. (1998). Telling teacher talk: Sociolinguistic features of writing conferences. Research and Teaching in Developmental Education, 15 (1). ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics. (ERIC Identifier ED 474754.)

Long, M.H. and Sato, C.J. (1983). Classroom foreigner talk discourse: Forms and functions of teachers’ questions. In H. W. Seliger, & M. H. Long, (eds.),Classroom-oriented research on second language acquisition(pp. 268-285). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Myhill, D. and Dunkin, F. (2002). What’s a good question? Literacy Today, 33. 8-9.

Thonus, T. (2002) Tutor and student assessments of academic writing tutorials: What is success? Assessing Writing, 8,110-134.

Tollefson, J.A. (1988). Measuring communication in ESL/EFL classes. Cross Currents, 15(1), 37-46.

Acknowledgements

This work would not have been completed without the support of Dr. Sandra McKay, Esther Chan, and Deborah vanDommelen, Karen Wiederholt, Jennifer Peters, Debbie Miller, and Sherry Suisman of the SFSU Learning Assistance Center (2005-6).

1