Teacher Questions in Turkish EFL Classrooms: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze how teacher questions were formed and how they are posed depending on their functions in Turkish EFL (English as a foreign language) classrooms. In the current study, the types of teacher questions were classified according to Farrell’s taxonomy involving two main categories entitled as echoic and epistemic along with seven divergent sub-categories named as comprehension checks, clarification requests, confirmation checks, referential, display, expressive and rhetorical. Three EFL teachers’ different types of online EFL lessons such as grammar, reading, listening and speaking were recorded online for data collection. All recordings were turned into written transcripts for data analysis. The transcribed data was analyzed by the content analysis according to Farrell’s taxonomy, which was developed from Ellis (1994), regarding teacher questions. Samples of transcribed lessons were examined by the researcher and the data was qualitatively analyzed accordingly. The findings of the current study revealed that display and referential questions were used more often by the participant EFL teachers among all teacher question types. Although there was a resemblance with previous research regarding the most frequent teacher question types in general, the preference of question types differed from each other when each teacher’s video recordings analyzed separately. In addition, it can also be stated that teachers tended to favor the comprehension check questions intermittently in the instructional phase of lessons by reason of assuring that students perceived what they intended to deliver. The details are further discussed and the implications are made in the article.

Keywords

• Teacher Questions
• Students’ Participation
• Classroom Interaction
• English Language Teaching (ELT)

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