In this task, I choose Questioning Techniques issue as my study based on the observation during the SBE program conducted in schools.
Questioning is one of the most popular modes of teaching. For thousands of years, teachers have known that it is possible to transfer factual knowledge and conceptual understanding through the process of asking questions.
Questions serve many purposes. They can develop thinking skills, encourage discussion and stimulate new ideas. Questions allow teachers to determine how much a class understands and enable them to pitch lessons at an appropriate level. They are an important tool for managing the classroom, helping to draw individuals into the lesson and keeping them interested and alert. And questions have a symbolic value - sending a clear message that pupils are expected to be active participants in the learning process.
Teachers ask questions for several reasons (from Morgan and Saxton, 1991):
- the act of asking questions helps teachers keep students actively involved in lessons;
- while answering questions, students have the opportunity to openly express their ideas and thoughts;
- questioning students enables other students to hear different explanations of the material by their peers;
- asking questions helps teachers to pace their lessons and moderate student behavior; and
- Questioning students helps teachers to evaluate student learning and revise their lessons as necessary.
eachers ask a number of questions before they start to work directly on the reading. I believe these questions will help the pupils warm up for the task, and get familiar with the topic of the reading. It is usually in this phase that some of the vocabulary (and idioms) are activated in the pupil's mind and they experience their use in real contexts.
Some teachers used general questions to the pupils in the classroom. The interesting aspect of these questions is that learners responded to these questions in two contrasting ways: they either kept silent or gave a choral response. Examples: (Observation Year 4 class – Topic on Living in Harmony)
a) Teacher: Does anybody know about the importance of neighborhood community?
Class: (silence)
b) Teacher: (After the reading is finished) Any questions so far?
Students: No, no. (a choral response)
However, I discovered that teachers usually do not give real wait time during asking a question. Increasing the wait time improved the number and quality of the responses. For a lower-order recall question, three seconds was found to be the optimum wait time, while wait times of more than 10 seconds produced even better results with higher-order questions.
Most of the questions asked by teachers concerned on these particular such as comprehension checks, summary of paragraphs, idioms, the right way of pronouncing certain word, meaning of words such as “dozen” and “response” – (Observation on Year 5 – Text book Page 86)
When I entered Puan Nirmala V.’s class (English and Music Teacher), I think she used a very good questioning techniques approach.
Situation : She was teaching Year 6, a hand out given on practicing grammar section English Paper 1. During the revision learning process, she first asked a question and after that call on the pupil to answer it. When the pupil answered wrongly, she did not easily get disappointed with the pupil.
She gave a second chance to the pupil and I once heard she said “Before answering, think carefully about the question”. This really impressed me because she really wanted to encourage and guide the pupil to answer. Whenever the answer doesn’t meet her expectation, she will ask again whether the pupil can elaborate it to a more specific yet simple to understand. After that, she asked the pupil, “What makes you think that?”, and also ask other pupil’s responses and comment on it.
She even praises those pupils who answered correctly. From this observation, I learnt that questioning can develop their eager to the thought and investigations process. This can lead to their motivation and generate new ideas. I also detect that most of the pupils who are less likely to involve themselves in the teaching and learning are usually encouraged to speak when asked to speak. They are less confident or maybe shy so teachers uses “force” approach to force pupil to answer. Some teachers repeated and asked questions several times lead to the interaction decline among pupils. They become lack of motivation, boring, and discourages. Moreover, when the class-work is limited to a textbook, and just concentrates on the exercises of the book. However, when there was activities carry out, the pupils were more tend to talk and participate in the topic interests them.
I still remember Ms Siti Hajar (English and Science Teacher for Level 1) shared with me on how to enhance and tested pupil’s listening skill by questioning. She said, as a teacher, we must be able to question well. Teacher should also consider on the thinking ability of the pupil and it is important to ensure pupil understand of what was being asked. This can also increase pupil’s interaction indirectly, which I strongly agree with her statement.
In addition to it, in a research review on questioning techniques, Wilen and Clegg (1986) suggest teachers employ the following research supported practices to foster higher student achievement:
- phrase questions clearly;
- ask questions of primarily an academic nature
- allow three to five seconds of wait time after asking a question before requesting a student's response, particularly when high-cognitive level questions are asked;
- encourage students to respond in some way to each question asked;
- balance responses from volunteering and non-volunteering students;
- elicit a high percentage of correct responses from students and assist with incorrect responses;
- probe students' responses to have them clarify ideas, support a point of view, or extend their thinking;
- acknowledge correct responses from students and use praise specifically and discriminately. (p. 23)
Brock (1986) and Long and Sato (1983) have reported that classroom interaction was characterized by the use of display questions. However, it seems that the use of display questions can encourage language learners, especially beginners, to get interested. It may also help teachers provide comprehensible input for learners.
Good question techniques are directed toward learning and evaluative thinking rather than determining what has been learned in a narrow sense. With this in mind, teachers must be sure that they have a clear purpose for their questions rather than just determining what knowledge is known. This type of question planning results in designing questions that can expand student's knowledge and encourage them to think creatively.
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