ELT Students’ Use of Teacher Questions in Peer Teaching

Abstract

Classrooms are recognised as social contexts, with often clearly defined role relationships. Teacher-student and student-student interactions in a classroom are essential since this is when learning takes place. This is more valid for language classrooms, where the teacher language serves a number of purposes such as organising learning, providing meaningful input, controlling and eliciting learner output, amongst others. It is not surprising, therefore, that language teachers often modify their language in the classroom to optimize learning. With the classroom discourse playing a fundamental role in language classrooms, classroom discourse and teacher talk has been subject to inquiry. The purpose is both to understand the nature of language classroom as a social context and to improve teaching/learning process through making optimal use of the target language in the classroom. This study adds to the body of study looking into classroom discourse, but in a simulated micro-teaching setting. Specifically, this talk will report the findings of an ongoing research project on the use of teacher questions by ELT students in a Turkish state university. As a partial requirement for some of their courses in their pre-service training, ELT students do microteachings where they plan and teach a lesson to their peers. In this study, 60 students' micro-teachings for two courses have been recorded for four academic terms; and student teachers' use of questions has been analysed. The initial findings show that student teachers use questions for organising the learning environment more than for eliciting meaningful output or scaffolding the language. The findings will have implications for pre-service teacher education programmes as well as in-service training.

The Potential of General Classroom Observation: Turkish EFL Teachers’ Perceptions, Sentiments, and Readiness for Action

“…The beneficial effects of peer observation and setting team work organizations in schools on EFL teachers' professional development have been documented in many studies in all over the world (Alwan, 2000;Arsene, 2010;Cosh, 1999;Donnelly, 2007;Pollara, 2012;Zuidema, 2014). In the Turkish context, peer-teaching in foreign language classrooms is mostly limited to practices of teacher trainees (Course, 2014;Gürsoy & Karatepe, 2006;Kavanoz & Yüksel, 2010); therefore, there stands out the need for those activities for the various benefits it will give.…”

Teachers' Questioning in EFL Classroom: Facts and Expectations at Senior High School in Ambon

“…reference [5] described question as an instructional signal or stimulation for students about the content of learning and ways for students to do it. Therefore, teachers" questions have a vital role in classroom instruction.…”

“…According to reference [5] the lack of pedagogical knowledge from the teachers can cause them to have problems in constructing questions. T2 admitted that the biggest challenges for the teachers in constructing questions were to understand clearly about the use of revised Bloom taxonomy and the principles in formulating questions.…”

“…Therefore, as the researchers who concern with the practice of teachers" questioning in EFL classroom, the researchers wanted to investigate more about teachers" questioning as it is supported by reference [5] that teacher" questioning is very appealing issue in the research field about classroom discourse as it is placed as an important role in communicative approach of EFL context.…”

Improving Classroom Teaching Abilities with Pair Teaching Strategy in Higher Education: A Case Study in BIGC

“…Students plan and teach a lesson to the peers in English Learning Class [12]. Teachers are paired randomly and each teacher reviewed each one's classroom teaching in Nursing and Midwifery [13].…”