Competencies in Knowledge, Preparation and Questioning Skills: From English Teachers’ Perspectives

Abstract

This survey study aims to identify English teachers' competencies in their knowledge, preparation and questioning skills in enhancing students' English proficiency. The aspects of teachers' knowledge in this study focuses on their knowledge in difficulty level of questions, questioning strategies suitable for students' needs. Meanwhile, for their preparation more refer to types of questions and materials that can improve English learning in the classrooms. As for questioning skills, the aspects are viewed from teachers' variety skills such as designing the questions as well as differentiating higher and lower order level of questions. This study involved 160 English teachers from 40 junior high schools in Pekanbaru, Riau Indonesia.the pilot study test using Cronbach Alpha analysis revealed that all items in the constructs between 0.772 and 0.962. data were analyzed using SPSS 22.0. The results show that the overall level of knowledge is moderate except for knowledge on promoting students' thinking to guide them in answering the questions which is at high level. As for the preparation, results show that the overall level is high and this shows that teachers often prepared prior to English lessons. Questioning skills level reported to be at moderate level in which illustrates that teachers are yet to master the skills acquired in questioning. The implication of this study reveals that all of the three aspects are crucial in improving the students' English proficiency and need to be mastered by the English teachers.