bahasa iggris.indb EEJ 3 (1) (2013) English Education Journal http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej TEACHER’S QUESTIONS AND STUDENTS’ RESPONSES DEVELOPED IN EFL CLASSROOM (A CASE AT AN RSBI VOCATIONAL SCHOOL IN PEKALONGAN) Yakhya Eka Saputra  Postgraduate Program of Semarang State University, Indonesia Abstrak Penelitian ini untuk mengetahui jenis-jenis pertanyaan guru dan jawaban-jawaban siswa dalam pembelajaran EFL. Penelitian ini juga untuk mengetahui sudut pandang guru dalam menggunakan pertanyaan tertentu juga alasan siswa memberikan jawaban verbal dengan cara mereka. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif dan kuantitatif. Data yang didapatkan terfokus pada jenis-jenis pertanyaan guru dan jawaban siswa dalam kelas EFL. Sedangkan kuantitatif karena data tersebut tersusun untuk mendukung pengumpulan data dalam penelaahan dan diskusi. Para responden adalah dua guru yang mengajar pada tingkat yang berbeda. Ada enam puluh siswa sebagai partisipan dalam penelitian ini. Metode yang digunakan untuk analisis data adalah mentraskripkan hasil dari rekaman video pada saat pembelajaran dan mengkategorikannya kedalam jenis- jenis pertanyaan,serta jawaban-jawaban siswa. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa ada beberapa jenis pertanyaan guru yang diajukan dalam proses belajar mengajar. Jenis-jenis jawaban verbal siswa yang sering diungkapkan oleh siswa adalah jawaban khusus dan jawaban choral. Pada akhirnya, dengan menggunakan teknik-teknik memodifikasi pertanyaan yang tepat maka siswa akan terbantu dalam mengungkapkan jawaban atas pertanyaan-pertanyaan tersebut. Abstract This research investigated the type teacher’s questions and students’ responses developed in EFL classroom. It also investigated the perspective of teacher in using such questions and the reasons for the students in verbal response they do. It is a qualitative study supported by quantitative data. The data focused on teachers’ questions and students’ responses developed in EFL classroom. And it is quantitative research since the data was to support the interpreta- tion and discussion. The respondents were two teachers who thought at different grade. And there were sixty students at first semester in two different classrooms. The method of data analysis of this study involved transcribing of video tape of teaching learning and categoriz- ing the type of questions, students’ response. The research findings showed that there was several type of teachers’ question delivered in the process of teaching learning. The types of students’ verbal response that more frequently use by the students are student specific re- sponse and choral response. At the end, by using the suitable modification techniques, the students will be helpful to elicit their response © 2013 Universitas Negeri Semarang Info Artikel Sejarah Artikel: Diterima April 2013 Disetujui Mei 2013 Dipublikasikan Juni 2013 Keywords: Types of Question; Teachers’ Questions; Students’ Verbal Response  Alamat korespondensi: Kampus Unnes Bendan Ngisor, Semarang 50233 E-mail:yakhya_limah@yahoo.com ISSN 2087-0108 47 Yakhya Eka Saputra / English Education Journal 3 (1) (2013) INTRODUCTION It is commonly believed that teachers in traditional classrooms tend to dominate the in- teraction and speak most of the time because they think that close and persistent control over the classroom interaction is a precondition for achieving their instructional goals. A common problem that EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers are facing is to deal with a passive class where students are unresponsive and avoid inter- action with the teacher. Questioning is one of the type of interaction which commonly used by the English teachers in their reading EFL classroom. The numbers of interaction between the teacher and students in the classroom are quiet limited by some factors. Those factors could be the time allotment, students’ curiosity, teachers’ care and the condition of teaching learning acti- vity. By using an effective questioning in teaching learning activity, the target of teaching learning can be achieved through this way. Subsequently, the utility of teacher ques- tions need to be measured against three inter- dependent restricting factors (Gabrielatos, 2001): (1) need to minimize teacher talking time, so that teachers do not dominate the lesson, (2) the importance of involving learners and eliciting/ generating as much learning thinking and talk as possible, and (3) the need for time effectiveness, since a common complaint of teachers is that the- re never seems to be enough time to deal with the test syllabus. Questioning plays an important role in te- acher talk which is considered to have a potential effect on learners’ comprehension, and which has been hypothesized to be important for Se- cond Language Acquisition (SLA) (Ellis, 1994). The perfect or ideal situation of teaching learning should reveal in every meetings. It will show to us that the questions take a role in this situation to melt the unexpected situation between the teach- ers and the students. The term scaffolding refers to providing contextual support for meaning through the use of simplified language, teacher modeling, visual and graphics, cooperative learning and hand-on learning. There have been a number of typologies and taxonomies of questions. Darn (2008) af- firms that Socratic questioning, exemplified by Paul’s taxonomy, forms the basis of eliciting, while Bloom’s taxonomy identifies six types of question by which thinking skill may developed and tested. The level of thinking in human life actual- ly has the same way between one another. Start from the lower thinking and the higher thinking Table 1. Summary of Question Taxonomy Question Type Brief Explanation 1. Display a. Open display b. Closed display - Question that teacher know the answer. - Display question that elicit linguistically complex answer. - Display question which result in short answers 2. Referential a. Open referential b. Closed referential - Question which seek information in nature and teachers do not know the answer. - Referential question which elicit linguistically complex answer. - Referential questions which results in simple elicitation or factual information. 3. Procedural - Questions which are relative, lesson and student control processes. 4. Convergent - Questions which have short answers encourage similar student re- sponses. These, also require low require level thought processing. 5. Divergent - Questions which necessitate more wide ranging, longer responses with higher level of thought processing. 6. Rhetorical - Questions which the questioner answer him/herself. 7. Interaction a. Comprehension b. Confirmation check c. Clarification request - Questions which elicit assurance from the listener that a message has been received correctly. - Questions which assume a positive response and allow the speaker to correctly interpret reactions by the listener. - Questions which are similar to confirmation request but with a more open answer. Yakhya Eka Saputra / English Education Journal 3 (1) (2013) 48 of questions. When the people want to ask in deep about something, they have to select the ap- propriate questions. So, the result of those questi- ons should be in higher thinking. Teacher questions taking place in class- room are defined as instructional cues or stimuli, communicating to the students the content ele- ments to be learned and directions for what they do and how they are to do it (Cotton,1988). Generally, in English classroom, teachers always allow students answer their question in four ways: (1) nominating; (2) chorus-answering; (3) volunteering; (4) teacher self answering. Each brings about respective teacher’s reason and con- sequences. Relating to the IRF structured discussed previously, when teacher provides a question, there will be a response from students. this res- ponse is classified into students talk. According to Chaudron (1988:32) state that Students’ talks in classroom interaction are divided into eight responses. The difficulty to answer the questions is common in classroom teaching learning activity. Even in the EFL classroom, it is frequently found that the students cannot answer the questions not because of reluctance or the absence of knowled- ge; rather they do not know how to express the answer in English. This is happening because of some factors that influence among the students and even the teacher it. METHODS In this study, the researcher used case stu- dy method. The source of data was collected from the sample of eleven grades in RSBI voca- tional students and the English teachers of this grade. They were asked in several questionnaires about all their perception and experience in lear- ning English. And from their answered were ana- lyzed. In additional, this study also involved the teachers to get the data of teacher questioning in classroom interaction. Based on the characteristic of qualitative case study, it was reasonable for the present re- searcher to investigate a teacher questioning in classroom teaching learning activity in-depth to understand the process of questioning in class- room setting holistically. It was also focus on the investigation particularly on the types of teacher questions, question modifications, and student responses develop in EFL classroom. The effect of teacher’s question type which influences the students’ verbal response was the main result in this study. The validity of this study was ensuring with two points of view of paradigm; positivism and constructivism paradigm (Craswell & Miller, 2000). In positivism paradigm, the validity pro- cedure was conducted through member checking. In this study, the researcher asked the par- ticipants’ check in two ways; transcribing and interpreting the video recorded data. In the way of transcribing video recorded data, both parti- cipants asked to make sure that the transcription was valid based on the recorded data. In the way of interpreting the video recorded data, the par- ticipants asked to check whether the questions in the transcription were questions or not. Meanwhile, from the point of view of constructivism paradigm, this study was valida- ted by presenting deep description on the process and the setting of this study based on the field no- tes during the observation. The specific moments (questioning-answering activities) during the ob- servation were video recorded and the conversa- tions were transcribed. The participants of this study involved the English teachers and to get data on student’s res- ponses. There were ten and twelve grades of vo- cational students in RSBI. The teachers who have been teaching at school for several years were taught at the different grade and have their own experiences in teaching English. Also, they were 60 students, 53 male and 7 females. The students’ ages are between 16-18 years old, they took up first semester of their academic year. Table 2. The students’ participants No Grade Total number 1. XII AUTOMOTIVE 30 2. X AUTOMOTIVE 30 Total participant 60 The teachers were non-native speakers but had completed their study at college at education, majoring English teacher training. They are expe- rienced teacher for several years. In general, they are very understandably familiar with her univer- sity students’ typical characteristic in terms of their wide-gap English ability, their learning pre- ferences, and, in particular, their generally weak in oral proficiency. Hence, their current oral proficiency and language competence were not yet predicted. They were not, additionally, grouped on the basis of their present language proficiency. In this case, they were being interviewed to find out their Eng- lish experience while they were in last grade or in the previous study. 49 Yakhya Eka Saputra / English Education Journal 3 (1) (2013) This study was conducted in a vocational school located in Pekalongan city on 3rd and 10th October 2012 . One of the reasons to choose this school was the location of the researcher into this school. And another consideration was that the school is a private pilot international standard school (RSBI) which English used by the teach- ers and the students in teaching learning activity. There were two classes as the focus of observati- on. The observation held two times for each class. After the observation, the researcher distributes the questionnaire and interview to the teachers and the students. It was held in order to know the teachers and students experience in English Foreign language classroom. The result of the observation transcribed from the video recording. There were three main techniques used to collect the data; observation, questionnaire and video recording. The observation used to identify ‘teacher question’ and ‘students understanding to answer’. The data were collected in two stages: observation of an EFL class in teaching learning lasting 45 minutes per session and a semi-structu- red or a guided- questionnaire with the teachers and students after the completion of lesson tran- scripts. Questionnaire was conducted to know and reconfirm the data from observation and video recording and to find out teacher’s understanding of classroom activity, questioning and students’ response. The questionnaire was carried out in Indonesian language in order to find out the te- acher reason(s) for using particular question type the most frequently in depth. Meanwhile the video recording used to ‘capture many detail of lesson that cannot be ea- sily observed such as the actual language used by teachers or students during a lesson’ (Richards & Lockhart, 1994; 1997). The researcher used the video recording in order to make sure that the data would not break or loose because some mistakes. One of the ad- vantages using video recording in the observation is the data from the observation revealed the real condition when it held. Then, two sessions were considered an adequate number of observations as they revealed the data needed. Subsequently, two video-taped sessions were transcribed employing the adapted transcript conversations from van Lier (1998:48) and Wells (2003:60). However, some unnecessary details were omitted for the convenience of the present study. In the case to combine of several research methodologies in this study, the data triangulati- on was used involving time, space, and persons. The step of data collection was identifying the observation, categorizing the type of questions and students’ verbal response, calculating the data in which the teacher’s type of questions and students’ responses, then coding the data collecti- on, concluding and interpreting the result. Regarding with the actual classroom ob- servations, an adapted Flint system together with Ethnographic approach was opted. Actually, the- re have been a number of so-far developed and complicated instruments to describe or classify all types of verbal instructions. Personally, the researcher once experien- ced to be observed by the supervisor utilizing such instrument. For a novice researcher, familia- rity with the instruments prior its actual utilizati- on seems essential in that it may affect the reliabi- lity of the collected data (Farooq, 2007). In this study the researcher read some lite- rature to support and to be the basic knowledge in doing the study. The FLINT system whose sche- me copes with both low inference items and the categories overtly avail the required classroom data such teachers’ questions, the number of distinctive students’ responses, and students’ lan- guage production. Nevertheless, the system does not cater all the required data for this study such as the preponderant questions types, modificati- on techniques, and the quantity of the students’ language production. Transcribing from video taped of teacher student interaction, a kind of ethnographic re- cord, is undoubtedly a strenuous and time con- suming task. Yet, it provides a few benefits: the preserved data can be made use of validating and verifying the findings, for reliability purposes, either by independent reviewer/s or by the rese- archer him/herself (Seliger and Shohamy, 1995), examined other observational schemes. In particular, it really bails out an unskilled researcher to familiarize him/her with unclear concepts systematically. At the same time, this guides him/her to precede the process of the re- search. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS Based on the data of observation, video recording and questionnaire the classroom acti- vities and types of teachers’ question which were conducted by the two teachers had been recogni- zed during the teaching learning activities. Based on that classification, it been found that the two teachers had used all of those types of questions when implemented the two class- room activities to deliver the teaching learning Yakhya Eka Saputra / English Education Journal 3 (1) (2013) 50 researcher’s observations. The types of numbers of the questions are presented at the following table. The result on the table shows that the te- acher never checks whether the questions are comprehended by the students or not. The fact shows that comprehension check questions only occur in little part that revealed this issue in this study. Referring to the framework of Wu (1993) and Lorscher (2003), the data reveal that there were two types of students’ responses delivered from teachers’ questions in the present study; they are verbal response and non-verbal response. Verbal responses refer to the answers of teachers’ questions produced by the students in the form of word, simple sentence, or complex sentence. It had been found that there were three ty- pes of verbal responses provided by the students when their teachers ask or delivered questions to them in present study. The first type was very simple answer such as “yes” or “no”, the second type was simple sentence or restrictive response, and the last type was elaborative response. The result of detailed distribution of te- acher employ-employed techniques attained from the two sessions that teachers show below: Table 5 shows that the biggest question modification technique is additional question (15%). Most of the time when teacher delivering the questions, they wait for students response or answer just in time after the questions are posed. Otherwise, the teachers show other three techni- ques: simply repeated, rephrased, and additional question. The teachers are like to add the ques- tions (15%) and just repeating twice (3%) and (12%). Generally, the teachers try to shift particu- lar words in order to help student comprehension (7 %). The research found that the teacher emplo- ys a particular question the most frequently that is referential or divergent question. There are many reasons why teachers employ more referential questions than other questions types. First, in be- ginning of the lesson, the teacher just leads and involves the students in the topic by finding out how much they are familiar with it. Students’ heterogeneous language profi- ciency and teachers’ eagerness to bring the real life situations occurring in the classroom could be one of the reasons. Based on the interviewed toward the students, it reveals that most of them Table 3. types and numbers of questions used by Teachers No. Teacher questions D is p la y q u es ti o n R ef er en ti al q u es ti o n P ro ce d u ra l q u es ti o n C o n ve rg en t q u es ti o n D iv er ge n t R h et o ri ca l C o m p re h en si o n C o n fi rm at io n C la ri fi ca ti o n In st ru ct io n al C o n ve rs at io n al 1. Teacher A 21 23 6 6 0 1 7 9 7 8 1 2. Teacher B 15 20 2 2 1 0 1 2 8 7 0 Total 36 43 8 8 1 1 8 11 15 15 1 Table 4. Students’ verbal response No. Participants Students’ response Student specific response Choral student response Open end- ed student response Work orient- ed confusion Non-work oriented confusion Laughter 1. XII AUTO 9 4 54 2 7 1 2. X AUTO 10 2 20 15 10 5 Total 19 6 74 17 17 6 Table 5. The Teacher’s question modification techniques Question modifica- tion techniques Simply repeated Rephrased Wait time Additional question Code switch- ing Teacher A 12% 7% 4% 2% 12% Teacher B 3% 7% 2% 15% 0% 51 Yakhya Eka Saputra / English Education Journal 3 (1) (2013) actually want to give the response in English. Because of their low proficiency in English, they prefer to give the response in a short answer or words. CONCLUSIONS There were several types of teachers’ ques- tion delivered in the process of teaching learning. The types of students’ verbal response that were more frequently used by the students were stu- dent specific response and choral response. By using suitable modification techniques, the stu- dents would be able to elicit their response. There are a number of reasons why teach- ers employ more referential questions than other questions types. 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