MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES, HUE UNIVERSITY ------------ TRAN THI THUY TRANG AN INVESTIGATION OF EFL TEACHERS’ QUESTIONING FROM A DISCOURSE PERSPECTIVE MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Hue University of Foreign Languages HUE, 2020 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES, HUE UNIVERSITY ------------ TRAN THI THUY TRANG AN INVESTIGATION OF EFL TEACHERS’ QUESTIONING FROM A DISCOURSE PERSPECTIVE MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 8140111 SUPERVISOR: DO THI XUAN DUNG, Ph. D HUE, 2020 BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ ------------ TRẦN THỊ THUỲ TRANG TÌM HIỂU VIỆC ĐẶT CÂU HỎI CỦA GIÁO VIÊN TIẾNG ANH THEO QUAN ĐIỂM DIỄN NGÔN LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƯƠNG PHÁP DẠY HỌC BỘ MÔN TIẾNG ANH MÃ SỐ: 8140111 NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: TS. ĐỖ THỊ XUÂN DUNG HUẾ, 2020 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby declare that the thesis entitled “An investigation of EFL teachers’ questioning from a discourse perspective” has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. The thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference or citation is made.
Researcher Tran Thi Thuy Trang Hue, 2020 i ABSTRACT Teachers’ questioning is a common interaction in classrooms, which seems to be a tool to stimulate learning and enhance the result of teaching. Teachers’ questions support students not only to answer the questions but also to promote learning behavior and trigger students’ conscious knowledge. Critical Discourse Analysis is not a new approach to study teaching and learning English all over the world. However, this approach is not frequently applied in the context of Vietnam to initially examine the connections between teachers’ questioning in teaching and learning English in general, reading comprehension in particular.
Therefore, the main purpose of this research is to investigate EFL teachers’ questioning from a discourse perspective at University of Foreign Languages – Hue University. The participants of this research were a teacher from the English Department and 30 students in her class who took part in the research voluntarily. The approach used which was qualitative as audio recordings and classroom observations. The results reveal that most of the teacher questions were used as strategies to involve students in learning.
Besides, the findings also illustrate the connections between teachers’ questioning and students’ conscious knowledge. Last but not least, some suggestions for teaching reading skills were thus offered to help teachers exploit teachers’ questioning more effectively. Keywords: Teacher questioning, Classroom Discourse, Critical Discourse Analysis, conscious knowledge, learning behavior ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper could not have been completed without the encouragement and support from several individuals and groups to whom I would like to express my deep sense of gratitude during the stressful time of writing this paper. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Dr.
Do Thi Xuan Dung for her valuable guidance and enthusiastic support I never forget. With her profound knowledge, she was willing to give me support at any time. She kindly read my paper as well as offered invaluable detailed advice. More importantly, she has been a great source of inspiration for me to conduct the research in the discourse field.
Additionally, she helped me to contact the teacher at HUFL to record and observe the Reading classroom. Second, my warm thanks go to the teachers and students of departments at Hue University - University of Foreign Languages, English Department in particular, who participated in the research as research participants. They were ready to give me a chance to observe their classes and record three teaching hours. Their help contributes greatly to the completion of this study.
My best thanks also go to the teacher staff working at the university library, who created favorable conditions for me to get access to necessary material and information for the study. Last but not least, I wish to especially thank my devoted and supportive parents as well as my best friends for giving me helpful advice about life and encourage me to overcome all my personal problems to finish this research. Their endless love is my strong motivation to work hard and exert myself to conduct this study. Without all the aforementioned supports and encouragements, this research would have never been completed.
iii TABLE OF CONTENT Statement of authorship. iii Table of content. iv List of figures. vi List of tables.
vii List of abbreviations. viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION. Error! Bookmark not defined. Significance of the study.
4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 Definitions of questioning .3 Questioning to learning. Categories of questions .5 The importane of questioning. Discourse Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis. An introduction to CDA.
CDA as an analytical framework. Context of the research. Transcription and Coding. Coding the data.
31 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Teachers’ questioning strategies in the Reading classroom. Frequency of asking audience-oriented questions. Frequency of asking content-oriented questions.
Frequency of using question forms. Discussion of the use of questioning strategies in the Reading classroom .2 The connections between teachers’ questioning and students’ learning behavior .3 The connections between teachers’ questioning and students’ conscious knowledge. Summary of the key findings .1 The teachers’ questioning strategies in a Reading classroom.2 The connections between teachers’ questioning and students’ learning behavior.3 The connections between teachers’ questioning and students’ conscious knowledge. Implications for teachers.
Implications for curriculum development. Implications for administrators. Limitations and suggestions for further research. P1 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: The taxonomy of question functions proposed by Chang (2012) .2: Dimensions of communicative event proposed by Fairclough (1995).
22 Appendix 1: Categories of audience-oriented qyestions. 1 Appendix 2: Categories of content-oriented questions. 4 Appendix 3: Transcripts from audio-recordings. 6 Appendix 4: Unit Description-Reading 2.
29 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1: The taxonomy of question forms proposed by Chang (2012) .2: Table of coding process .1: The frequency of teacher’s using audience-oriented question functions in three Reading 2 lesssons.2: The frequency of teacher’s using content-oriented question functions in three Reading 2 lesssons .3: The frequency of teacher’s using question forms in three Reading 2 lesssons. 34 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS No. Abbreviation Full expression 1 CDA Critical Discourse Analysis 2 EFL English as a foreign language 3 HUFL Hue University of Foreign Languages viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This chapter begins with the background that motivated the research. Besides, it describes the research rationale, research aims, research questions as well as the scope of the research.
Finally, the organization of the study is also included in the chapter. Research rationale Reading comprehension is one of the most vital skills in studying English. The biggest challenges of teachers in teaching reading are to support students to engage in predicting, clarifying, summarizing, reviewing and noting text organization, which are all discussed the meaning of the text information. Cook (1994) assumed that discourse as the combination of text and context is interacted, perceived as meaningful and unified by the participants.
Thus, using teacher questions as a tool to examine students’ understanding is crucial. The interaction of teachers and learners often takes place in the classroom when the teachers ask questions and students respond. This type of interaction is controlled by teachers with students of the whole class, a small group or an individual. The teacher is a centered figure who uses question functions to give the instructions, stimulate students’ learning or provoke students’ knowledge.
The role of teachers in this process is also to transmit knowledge to learners, to connect the students’ old and new knowledge and to take advantages of questioning for eliciting responses, focusing information or stimulating thought. Chaudron (1988), as well as Nunan and Lamb (1996), assumed that teachers’ questioning is considered as a tool to direct information, check students’ comprehension and form their behavior. Obviously, teacher questioning plays a crucial role during the teaching-learning process. The taxonomy of question adopted by Chang (2012) is combined by two main categories.
The first group is called audience- oriented questions with five functions as eliciting response, class management, checking comprehension, soliciting agreement and requesting confirmation, while the rest of group is content-oriented questions containing two functions, focusing information and stimulating thoughts. Each category aims at every feature of promoting students’ learning behaviors and stimulating students’ conscious knowledge. Students’ learning, contribution and critical thinking are promoted by raising questions and receiving learners’ responses. A 1 question proposed by teachers can stimulate students' learning, participation and thinking, especially critical thinking (Wilen, 1991).
Therefore, the types of questions and questioning strategies by teachers have adequate influence on students’ understanding. Caram and Davis (2005) stated that teacher questions are of significant values for many instructional purposes, eliciting students’ reflection and challenging deeper students understanding and engagement in the classroom. Teachers’ questioning can support students’ learning behaviors. In other words, learning behaviors express students’ attitude who take part in active learning activity during the process of learning.
It also refers from the interact of students’ oral response, students’ behaviors and students’ self- esteem in learning. Besides, the term of conscious knowledge in using teachers’ questioning to collect explicite knowledge. This means that conscious knowledge relates to the states which happen in students’ brain to help them understand and recognize something which is set up from their cognition and awareness of their own thinking. Consequently, it is essential to build up questioning strategies to assist learners in the process of language learning.
Hussain (2003) pointed out that teacher need to regularly adjust their questioning techniques in order to achieve the desired goals of questions posed. Undoubtedly, teacher understanding of language input can lead learners to produce the expected outcomes. What is more, classroom discourse is regarded as a means to contribute for conveying messages, ideas, and knowledge from the teacher to her/ his students. Despite the fact that there are many different approaches towards CDA, the author made a decision to choose Fairclough’s (Fairclough, 1995, 1989/2015; Fairclough & Wodak, 1997) framework consisting of textual description, interpretation and explanation which were made into a research tool by Janks (1997).
To analyze the impacts of teacher questions on students’ learning behaviors and their conscious knowledge, Fairclough’s CDA framework is applied in both categories of Chang’s (2012) taxonomy. Besides, the study also had the combinations of constructivist learning theory to explain the connections between teachers’ questioning and students’ learning while another combined method among the given-new theory, Halliday (1985)’s grammatical resources to examine the corelations between teachers’ questioning and students’ conscious knowledge. Furthermore, there has been some research into the impacts of teacher questions with quantitative or qualiatative methods in different levels of EFL 2 classrooms by using Bloom’s taxonomy, which has invested teacher talk as teacher feedback, teacher instruction, etc. All things considered, those are the main reasons for the research topic formulation: “An investigation of EFL teachers’ questioning from a discourse perspective” to gain an insight into teachers’ questioning strategies and students’ learning process at University of Foreign Languages, Hue University (HUFL).
Additionally, the connections between teachers’ questioning and students’ learning behavior as well as the connections between teachers’ questioning and students’ conscious knowledge are made clear to suggest some implications for using questions in teaching reading, which can then raise CDA awareness in researching the teaching practice effectively in the context of Vietnam. Research aims The study attempts to: - Investigate teachers’ questioning strategies during the process of teaching in Reading classrooms. - Investigate the connections between teachers’ questioning and students’ learning. - Investigate the connections between teachers’ questioning and students’ conscious knowledge.
- Suggest some proposals concerning the use of teacher questions in the process of teaching and learning English.