Characteristics of Student Questions in Korean EFL Classes

This paper surveyed some characteristics and effects of student questions in Korean EFL classes which were managed by native teachers. In Korean EFL classes, students preferred asking convergent questions to divergent ones; that is, most student questions did not require highorder thinking, but sought factual or conceptual knowledge of words or idiomatic expressions. The students used unmarked simple interrogative sentences, and rarely asked questions with complex or compound sentences. Also, quite a few of the student questions were ungrammatical. In the discourse which began with student questions, more than half of the interactions were made up of InitiationResponse (IR) patterns, lacking evaluation or feedback which usually appears in teacherinitiated discourse. Student questions often contributed to the increase of classroom interactions and comprehension of sentences or lexical items through negotiation of meaning. The native instructors often used them as scaffolding for providing other associated or related knowledge. Student questions were of some help in estimating their level of grammatical knowledge or speaking ability

언어과학연구 58 (2011)

Characteristics of Student Questions

Kidong Hwang(Naval Academy)

Hwang, Kidong 2011 Characteristics of Student Questions in

Korean EFL Class The Journal of Linguistic Science 58, 233-258.

This paper surveyed some characteristics and effects of studentquestions in Korean EFL classes which were managed by nativeteachers In Korean EFL classes, students preferred asking convergentquestions to divergent ones; that is, most student questions did notrequire high-order thinking, but sought factual or conceptual knowledge

of words or idiomatic expressions The students used unmarked simpleinterrogative sentences, and rarely asked questions with complex orcompound sentences Also, quite a few of the student questions wereungrammatical In the discourse which began with student questions,more than half of the interactions were made up of Initiation-Response(IR) patterns, lacking evaluation or feedback which usually appears inteacher-initiated discourse Student questions often contributed to theincrease of classroom interactions and comprehension of sentences orlexical items through negotiation of meaning The native instructorsoften used them as scaffolding for providing other associated or relatedknowledge Student questions were of some help in estimating their

level of grammatical knowledge or speaking ability (Naval Academy)

Key words student question, classroom interactions, scaffolding,

convergent/divergent question, grammatical modification

* This study was funded by Naval Institute of Ocean Research funded by the National

Research Fund of Korea in 2011.

1 Introduction

These days our pedagogical environments are changing rapidly from directed classrooms to student-centered ones In the student- centered classrooms,students quite often ask various kinds of questions, through which they try tounderstand the content in their own way, see connections in concepts, and applythem to real-life situations In those settings teachers also have begun to changetheir view on student questions: they are regarding student questions as a means ofproviding or processing essential information productively rather than as devices forthe evaluation of learning or comprehension (Walsh & Sattes, 2005) As a result,during the past decade, many researchers such as Ellis (2008), Wilen, Hutchison &Ishler (2008), and Ohta & Nakone (2004) have shown great interest in studentquestions

teacher-However, until recently, there has been little progress on the study of classroomdiscourse which is initiated by student questions One reason is because studentstypically have participated in the classroom discourse much less than teachers, andhave also done so in quite limited ways; in other words, in classroom discourse led

by Initiation-Response- Follow-up/Evaluation (IRF/E) exchanges, students have usuallytook the role of ‘response' Another reason is because researchers have had difficulty

in collecting data which include student questions in an EFL class; for example,Ohta and Nakone (2004) found that in a Japanese EFL class students asked onlytwenty questions out of 40 hours of instruction

Here, taking advantage of the student-initiated discourse which was transcribed duringthe native teachers' regular class, the researcher tried to find a few characteristics andeffects of student questions in Korean EFL classes: What types of questions do thestudents prefer to ask? At what cognitive level are student questions? Do studentquestions affect classroom interactions which could lead to better learning? Doesstudent initiation also show the same interactional patterns as teacher-initiated discourse?What are formal characteristics of students questions? Do the native teachers responddirectly to the student questions?

The result will be of some help in understanding the realities of student questions

in a Korean EFL class, and in finding out how to take advantage of student questionsmore effectively Also, it will provide some direction on how student questions should

be improved or developed for the enhancement of students’ communicative andcognitive ability in Korean EFL classes

2 Literature Review

2.1 Effects of Student Questions

The purpose of questioning is to engage thinking, extend thinking, share thinking,

or clarify and confirm thinking (Rogers, 2002)

Questions are one of the best ways teachers could seize the initiative in theclassroom exchange, control the classroom, and facilitate or sustain participation bythe students However, in today's student-centered classrooms, many researchers such

as Wilen, Hutchison and Ishler (2008) and Walsh and Sattes (2005) recommended thatteachers reduce the number of questions they ask, and help students formulate manyhigh-quality questions for effective learning and teaching

Until now, many researchers have found some effects and characteristics of studentquestions in the classroom discourse: First of all, by taking initiative throughquestions, students can use a wide variety of communicative acts and expressions thatcan be widely used in real-life situations Ellis (2008) said that in the student-centeredrole- playing the students often used discourse lubricants like topic introducers (forexample, ‘Well', ‘As you know') and various kinds of supportive moves which werewidely used in a natural setting In contrast, in the teacher-directed discussion, thestudents confined themselves to an ‘interactional core' like ‘Yes' or 'No' in thediscussion Cathcart (1986) also found that in a variety of school settings where thestudents had control of the conversation, the student's discourse was featured byvarious communicative acts and syntactic structures; however, in the settings overwhich the teacher had control the students usually produced single-word utterances,short phrases and formulaic sequences

Next, students were more likely to acquire a form and incorporate it into theirutterance in student-initiated discourse rather than in teacher-directed This may havebeen because student-initiated focus-on-form addresses the actual gap in the students'knowledge whereas teacher-initiated focus-on-form only deals with forms which theteacher hypothesizes might be problematic (Ellis, Basturkmen, & Loewen, 2001).Students may be pushed to use language at the limits of their competence in order tomake their questions comprehensible (Seliger and Long, 1983); that is, they shouldthink out an appropriate expression, perform a syntactic analysis of the expression,choose appropriate words, and pronounce them more clearly.

In addition, teachers can take advantage of student questions for the negotiation ofmeaning: they can request clarification and ask other questions in order to checkwhether their input was comprehensible This process is regarded as particularlyhelpful in promoting language acquisition because students usually ask questions whenthey are confused or want to get more information (Cundale, 2001)

Finally, by formulating questions, students can connect new information to old,and thereby experience learning as understanding (Walsh & Sattes, 2005) Thestudents who make connections between new content and personal experience areengaging in productive and long-term learning These students develop intrinsicmotivation and the skills of lifelong learning (Wells, 2001) Especially in those EFLcontexts where the students have few opportunities to interact with native speakers

in a natural setting, student questions in the classroom discourse can be a valuableopportunity to actively practice and experiment with the target language under thestudents' own initiation

2.2 Classification of Student Questions

Many researchers have developed various frameworks to classify functions ofquestions from either a pedagogical and linguistic point of view or according todifferent kinds of thinking and cognition From the pedagogical point of view,Barnes (1969) first divided questions into closed and open ones, but his framework

of questioning was unbalanced and developed as part of curriculum development in

L1 classes, so it was not suitable for the analysis of student questions in EFLclasses After that, Long and Sato (1984) developed a framework for the analysis ofteachers' questions using Barne's (1969) and Kearsley's framework of questions, andtried to cover all functions of questions in L2 classrooms Because their framework

of questions reflected the change of English teaching method in L2 classroom from

a traditional teaching method to a communicative teaching method (Chaudron,1988), many researchers such as Nunan(1989), Seedhouse(2004) and Walsh(2006)adopted their framework in the analysis of questions of L2 classrooms in one way

or another However, Long and Sato's (1984) framework didn't include questions onclassroom management and procedure which are beginning to play an increasinglyvisible role in today's classroom environments In fact, a few procedural ormanagerial questions were found in the corpus of student questions in Korean EFLcourses

Thus, to analyze functions of questions from both the linguistic and the managerial

or procedural point of view, Richard and Lockhart (1996) developed anothereframework of questions, which classified the types of questions into three parts -procedural, convergent, and divergent ones Their division of questions makes it easy

to classify student questions because it is only centered on the content of the questionitself rather than the learning procedure or teachers' point of view In addition theirdivision of questions can handle so-called ‘pseudo communication'1) without difficulty,which could be shown in the following example:

How long have you worn glasses? (Ellis, 2008)

So, what advice would you give the parents? (Cundale, 2001)

Following Long and Sato's (1983) framework of questions, the above questionsmight be considered both as display and as referential because on one hand, part

of the answer was predictable as the situation was set by the text, but on the

1) ‘pseudo-communication’is a discourse in which it is not clear whether the question is for structural purpose or for informational purpose (McTear 1975).

other hand, students could provide their own information (Cundale, 2001).However, according to Richard and Lockhart (1996) the second question isclassified simply as divergent because it not only requires students to formulateseveral answers but also engages them in still higher-level thinking rather than thefirst question.

Next, questions can be classified from a cognitive point of view Van Lier (1988)and Ellis (2008) contended that in order to examine the characteristics and effects ofstudent questions, student questions should be analyzed in terms of cognitive demands

as well as interactive purpose and linguistic production Recently, for the analysis ofquestions from both cognitive levels and knowledge dimension, Anderson and Krathwohl(2001) revised and extended the well-known Bloom's (1987) taxonomy It incorporatesboth a cognitive process dimension (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis,synthesis, and evaluation) and a knowledge dimension (factual, conceptual, procedural,and meta-cognitive knowledge)

Recently, for the development of quality questioning, Walsh and Sattes (2005)developed a comprehensive analytic framework of questions which incorporates bothRichard and Lockhart's (1996) linguistic framework and Anderson and Krathwohl's (2001)cognitive levels and knowledge dimensions Therefore, in order to comprehensivelyanalyze all kinds of student questions in the Korean EFL classrooms, the researcheradopted Walsh and Sattes' (2005) classification of questions

According to Walsh and Sattes (2005), student questions can be classified intothree types: First, convergent questions have a correct or acceptable response, and donot require respondents to engage in high-level thinking They serve to facilitate therecall of information rather than to generate student ideas and classroom communication.They can be included in the cognitive process dimensions of ‘recall' and ‘apply' inBloom's Taxonomy

Second, divergent questions have multiple, alternative, correct responses They call

on respondents to utilize higher-order thinking skills They encourage diverse responseswhich require students to provide their own information rather than to recall previouslypresented information They can be included in the cognitive process dimensions of

‘analyze', ‘evaluate' and ‘create' in Bloom's Taxonomy

Last, procedural questions have to do with classroom procedures or management, asopposed to the content of learning They are used to check assignments or instructions.They have a different function from the other two types of questions which aredesigned to help students master the content of a lesson.2)

The English conversation course consisted of juniors from a range of differentmajors: electronics, shipbuilding, computer science, oceanography, military history,international relations and foreign languages During the first semester of 2008, 167students took this course Every week, the students studied English conversation for

2) As mentioned before Long and Sato's (1983) epistemic classification of questions which was first developed in ESL classroom are most widely used in the classification of questions, butit doesn't include the procedural question.

two hours The class was managed in small groups and each group consisted ofeight to thirteen students Their TEPS score was between 450 and 800 points, andthey usually had little time to preview or review their textbooks before or afterclass.

The four teaching assistants who took notes of the topics studied in America orthe U.K for over 3 years and got higher than 600 points on the TOEFL PBTtests

3.1.2 Data Collection

All of the data were transcribed by the teaching assistants while while they wereassisting the native teachers' classroom activities during the 1st semester of 2008.Before class, the researcher chose two or three topics of dialogue or idioms fromthe native instructors' syllabus After that, with the permission of the four instructorsthe teaching assistants took notes of their classroom discourse on those topics everyThursday for ten weeks The teaching assistants had little difficulty in taking notes ofthe discourse because they assisted the instructors every day They took notes ofaround ninety three topics which were dealt with in the interactions between theteachers and students, and thirty two topics out of them included eighty seven studentquestions with the exception of student greetings One of the interactions which wasexchanged during discussion of the topic, ‘impolite expressions', can be seen in thefollowing:

T: When I was taking attendance, many of you said Yeah It is very impolite.

S1: What do we have to say?

T: You should say Yes instead of Yeah.

S2: Does it have other meaning in English?

The above dialogue includes two student questions - one student question whichasks how to say something politely and the other student question which asks thepragmatic difference between two expressions

Fortunately, while the teaching assistants were taking notes of the discoursebetween teachers and students, the researcher could often attend their class as asupervisor, and had chances to observe or write their classroom activities and speechhabits That was very helpful in classifying and analyzing their question forms Forthe classification of the student questions the researcher reviewed the discourse withthe teaching assistants every Friday and used his experience and intuition to ascertainthe types of questions presented.

3.2 Research Questions

As was mentioned in the introductory part this study surveys characteristics ofstudent questions at various points: epistemic types or types of knowledge, level ofcontent, grammatical forms, patterns of interactions, interactional contribution orpedagogical effects However, there has been little research into the characteristics ofstudent questions, compared with those of teacher questions Therefore, for theorientation and comparison of this research the recent research of teacher questions aswell as student questions should be mentioned briefly:

First, which types of questions do students prefer, convergent or divergent ones?Most researchers agree that language teachers prefer closed, display, or convergentquestions to open, referential, or divergent ones As an example, Richards andLockhart (1996) observed that teachers tend to ask more convergent questions thandivergent ones

Second, at what cognitive level are student questions? Walsh and Sattes (2005)argues that most teacher questions are at the lowest cognitive level - known as fact,recall, or knowledge - and do not require high-order thinking However, Walsh andSattes (2005) contended that high-level questions promote the development of thinkingskills

Third, how well do the students phrase their questions grammatically? In order tophrase or form a good question it takes thought, skill, and practice Ellis (2008)summarized that teachers tend to use short utterances, few subordinate sentences and

few marked structure, and to rarely use ungrammatical talk.

Fourth, what are interactional features of student questions? Many researchers agreethat the IRF/E cycle and display questions appear to be universal or general ineducation For example, Seedhouse (2004) and Ellis (2008) contended that the IRF/Ecycle and display questions appear to be universal phenomena in education andlearning contexts

Finally, do student questions contribute to language acquisition or classroompedagogical activities? Ellis (2008) proposed that learner initiation create theconditions that lead to the negotiation of meaning: it ensures the learner's interest inthe activity, helps the teacher to identify what speech forms may lie within thelearner's zone of proximal development, and provides a basis for determining the kind

of scaffolding

In the next part, the above research will be compared with the characteristics andeffects of student questions in Korean EFL classes

4 Results and Discussion

The research consists of five parts In the first four parts, the formalcharacteristics of student questions - epistemic types, level of content, grammaticalforms, patterns of interaction - are surveyed This analysis will show somecharacteristics of students' use of questions in Korean EFL classrooms In the lastpart the effects of student questions will be illustrated with examples It will clarifythe pedagogical or interactional effects of students' questioning behaviour and maysuggest the direction for the development of student questions in Korean EFLclassroom interactions

4.1 Epistemic Types of Student Questions

To examine the epistemic role of questions in the native teachers' EFL classesthree kinds of questions are distinguished here - convergent, divergent and procedural

Of a total of eighty seven student questions in the EFL classroom corpus, seventyfour questions (85%) were epistemic and thirteen (16%) procedural Within theepistemic category, fifty six (76%) were convergent questions and eighteen (24%)divergent ones, which is shown in Table 1 That is, in our EFL classrooms the ratio

of students' convergent questions is about 3 times higher than that of their divergentquestions On the other hand, in Shomoossi (2004) about 18% of teacher questionswere referential and 82% of them display ones That shows that the students alsotend to ask much more convergent or display questions than divergent or referentialones in Korean EFL classrooms

Table 1 Question Types

T: When speaking in English, there are certain ways to show politeness.

S1: Could you say that specifically? 1)

T: Okay Instead of saying, “Give me the salt”, you could ask, “Would you pass me the salt?” to be polite.

Therefore, it can be said that in Korean EFL classrooms the students ask questionsfor comprehension and clarification on their text or discussion topics than for genuineexchange of information on personal ideas, attitudes or opinions That is the studentsmight view their questions in the classrooms as devices to achieve their individualpedagogical purpose or to fill their lack of knowledge rather than as real-lifecommunication in which they freely exchange information and establish a closerapport

4.2 Cognitive Level of Student Questions

When applied to Anderson and Krathwohl's (2001) scheme of cognitive processdimension, most student questions were included in two basic levels - the domain ofknowledge and comprehension They did not require high-order thinking but onlysought factual or conceptual knowledge, which could be shown in Table 2

Table 2 Taxonomy Table

Cognitive Process Dimension Knowledge Comprehension

In the above table, twenty six (53%) out of forty one questions at the level ofknowledge dimension sought information on words: these questions were concernedwith provision of information on words or idioms, or differences of meaning betweentwo words On the other hand, at the level of comprehension dimension, fifteen(45%) out of thirty three questions were concerned with speaking and presentation.That is, these questions were concerned with specification or concrete examples ofteachers' explanations, description of personal ideas, or pragmatic categorization of anexpression such as:

What do we have to say?

Do you have special plan for the vacation?

How about saying, “I really appreciate you doing this for me?”

Therefore, it could be said that most of the student questions remained at lowlevel cognition which required only comprehension and recall of factual or textualinformation, rather than high-order thinking skills

4.3 Grammatical Forms of Student Questions

While teacher questions were usually grammatical, students often askedungrammatical or impolite questions: thirty five (40%) out of eighty seven questionswere ungrammatical or impolite, which could be shown in Table 3 Also, most ofthe student questions in T-unit were unmarked simple interrogative sentences Theratio (50%) of ungrammatical sentences in divergent questions - that is, nine out ofeighteen questions - was much higher than that (38%) of ungrammatical sentences

in convergent questions- that is, twenty one out of fifty six questions That maymean that our students are not accustomed to asking divergent questions which areneither connected with their previous learning nor dealt with in their course oflesson