Teachers’ Question

The number of questions asked by teachers

• Johnston (1990) : 522 questions of various types• Sato (1983) : 938 questions in six elementary level ESL lessons

Taxonomy of Questions: Barnes 1969;1976)

• Factual questions (what)• Reasoning questions (how and why):

• Closed• Opened

• Open questions• Social questions

Kearsley 1976

• Echoic questions• Epistemic questions

• Referential questions• Display questions

• Expressive questions• Social control question

The relationship between teachers’ choice of questions and the learners’ proficiency level

• Ellis (1985d): no difference in form of open or close questions with two learners over a nine month period• White (1992): referential question a high level class; display question a low level class

The effect of training teachers to ask specific types of questions

• Brock (1986) and Long and Crookes (1987) : instructors given training did response by increasing this type of question in their teaching• Koivukari (1987): training led teacher using more ‘deep’ comprehension questions

The necessity of acknowledging individual variation in teachers’ questioning strategies

• White (1992) found different patterns of questioning in his two teachers• Long and Sato (1983), Long and Crookes (1987), Koivukari (1987), Johnston (1990)

The Socio-cultural context of questioning strategies

• Poole (1992): the used of display or closed questions in the classroom

Learner Participation:1. Quantity of participation

Study Subjects Measures of participation

Measures of learning

Result

Selinger 1977

6 adults learning English

Amount of verbal interaction; any student speech act counted as interaction; initiation and responses scored separately

Close test;Structure test;Aural comprehension test

Total interaction score correlated significantly with structure and aural comprehension tests; proportion of initiations correlated significantly with aural comprehension test

Naiman et al. 1978

Learners of L2 French in Grade 8, 10, 12 in schools in Canada

Various measures of classroom behavior

Comprehension test; imitation test

Hand-raising, complete response, correct responses, and no of responses over 10 significantly related to both criterion measure. Negative correlation for incorrect/partially correct responses found

Strong (1963/1984)

13 kindergarten pupils in bilingual classroom

Responses to utterances produced by others

Various measures of linguistic correctness, vocabulary and pronunciation based on classroom speech

Children’s responsiveness correlated significantly with proficiency measures

Day 1984 26 adult learners of L2 English

Responses to teacher general solicits; self-initiated turns

Oral proficiency assessment of grammatical, pragmatic, and sociolinguistic competence; cloze test

No significant relationship between measurement of paricipation and criterion measures reported

Ely 19986 72 first year adult learners of L2 Spanish; half in first and half in second quarter

Number of self-initiated utterances in Spanish

Oral fluency in story reproduction task; oral correctness; written correctness

Weak relationship between participation and oral correctness found for first quarter students; no other significant relationship found

2. Quality of learner participation

Factor: the degree of control the learners exercise over the discourse

Catheart (1986) studied different kind of communicative acts performed by eight Spanish-speaking children• R

esult showed that differences in the quality of learners’ participation depending on the kind of activity they are involved in

Task and Interaction

Task-based syllabuses

• To specify the content to be taught in terms of series of activities to be performed by the students: by teacher or small group

The main research goal

• To uncover the specific variables affect the interaction that occurs when learners attempt to perform a task

Task framework

• Procedures for communicating the information• The task resolution

study Subject Task variable Main result

Long 1980a 16 NS – NS and 16 NS-NNS dyads

One way vs. two way information gap task

Performance by NS-NNS dyads significantly different in two way but not one way tasks

Tong-Fredericks1984

NNS-NNS dyads

(1) Problem-solving task, (2) role play task, (3) authentic interaction task

Self-corrections more evident on (2) and (3) than on (1). More turns per minute on (1). No differences in speaking speed

Gass and Varonis 1985a

9 NNSs in 3 dyads and 1 triad

One way vs. two way information gap tasks

No significant difference according to task found

Crookes and Rulon 1985

15NS-NNS dyads

(1) Free conversation tasks (2) closed convergent task, and (3) two-way information gap task

NS feedback following non-target-like usage more evident in (2) and (3). NNSs more likely to incoorporate NS feedback in (2) than in (1)

Duff 1986 4NNS dyads Convergent vs. divergent tasks Longer turn and more negotiation of meaning in divergent tasks found

Doughty and Pica 1986

NNS-NNS dyads

One way vs. two way information gap tasks

More negotiation of meaning found in two-ways task

Berwick 1990

12 NS-NNS dyads

(1) Teaching vs. non-teaching task (2) Social exchange vs. problem

solving(3) Experiential vs. expository

More repair and negotiation of meaning found in non-teaching than in teaching tasks. Exophoric and anophoric reference more evident in experiential and expository tasks. Teaching/expository tasks were the most conservative discourse environment’

Brown 1991 NNS dyads (1) Tight vs. loose task(2) Open vs. closed tasks(3) Procedural vs interpretative tasks

Procedural tasks did not result in instance of instructional input or hypothesizing. No other significant differences found

Newton 1991

2 groups of ESL learners

(1) One way vs. two ways tasks(2) Medical topic vs. zoo topic(3) Open and closed task

More negotiation found on tasks that two way/closed than one way/open tasksTwo ways/closed tasks les to a focus on language and task content One way/open tasks led to a focus on opinions and meaning

Jones 1991 13 adolescent ESL learners

(1) Role play debate and (2) A crisis simulation

No difference between tasks for amount of talk and turn length but (2) led to more topic sequences

Studies investigating the effects of task-variables on L2 interaction

Small-group work and interaction

Several pedagogical arguments in small-group work

• Increase language practice opportunities • Improve the quality of students talk• Help to individualize instruction• Promote a positive affective climate• Motivate learners to learn

Castano 1976

• Students working in small groups produced a greater quantity of language and also better quality language than students in a teacher-fronted

• Small-group work provided more opportunities for language production and greater variety of language use

Comparison of modified conversational interaction generated by optional vs required information exchange tasks on teacher-fronted and group participation patterns (Pica and Doughty 1988:51)

Task

Participation Pattern

Teacher-fronted Group

n % n %

Optional information exchange 347 49 145 40

Required information exchange 385 45 400 66

Benefit of small-group work:

• Learners will have more opportunity :• To speak• To negotiating meaning and content• To construct discourse collaboratively

• They will be exposed to more ungrammatical input

The relationship between classroom interaction and second language learning

Second language learning in the communicative classroom

Krashen (1982);Swain (1985; Prabhu 1987)

The failure of many classroom learners derives from the lack of comprehensible input and/or comprehensible output

Evidence of learners can learn ‘naturally’ in a communicative classroom setting

Terrel, Gomez, Mariscal (1980)

• Elementary learners of L2 Spanish can successfully acquire various question forms

• Result: 74% of 7th grade. 82%of 8th grade and 9th grade students’ question were correctly formed

Prabhu (1987)

• Develop program as CTP (Communicative Teaching Project)

• It aims to develop linguistic competence through a task-based approach to language teaching

• Result: • An advantage fro the project school

over the control school• Being positive

Light-bown (1992)

• Canadian French children in grades 3-6 were taught English by listening to tapes and following the written text

• Result: • Success in learning English• Learners were good at speaking• Resulted in very positive students

attitude• Effective in promoting L2 acquisition

Other studies suggest that communicative classrooms may not be so successful in promoting high levels of linguistic competences

Krashen (1982)

• Has claimed that immersion classroom have succeeded in developing very high levels of L2 proficiency

• Fact: immersion learners generally fail to acquire certain grammatical distinctions

Spada and Light-bown (1989)• An intensive ESL course produced little

evidence of syntactic development

Ellis (1992)

• Communicative classroom may not be well-suited to the achievement of sociolinguistic competence

• One interpretation of the research on communicative classroom is:• Giving beginner learners

opportunities for meaningful communication

• Communicative classroom setting may not be sufficient to ensure the development of high level linguistic competence

The effect of interaction on acquisition

Wong-Fillmore (1982) distinguished two basic types of

classroom organization:

Teacher-directed classrooms

Learner-centered organization

Conclusion:

Long (1990b) gives a number of reasons why the findings are not yet ready to pass on the teachers:

• The studies have generally been small-scale• They have tended to be short-term• The findings have tended to be partial or fragmented• Many of the studies are methodologically flawed• The absence of theoretical motivation

Some acknowledge of its achievement:

• General acceptance of the need to balance external account of language pedagogy• The availability of substantial body of descriptive information• Developing understanding of how specific variables affect interaction• The availability of tools in examining classroom interaction• Some insight into how interaction shapes L2 learning