خلاصة:
Questioning practice constitutes one of the typical and fundamental interactional tools in L2 teaching. Much L2 research on teacher questions has been quantitative studies focusing on identifying question types and their roles in language acquisition and meaning negotiation. However, by drawing on conversation analysis within a sociocultural perspective, this study examines qualitatively how EFL teacher questions can scaffold learning processes. The data were collected through videotaping EFL classroom interaction. Eleven sessions of seven intermediate-level teachers in private language schools were recorded. Through the microanalysis of the transcribed data, the study found that EFL teachers vary in their structuring of unfolding question-answer sequences and that only a small number of teacher questions tended to provide learning opportunities. Four question types providing scaffolded assistance were identified: simplifying questions, marking questions, prompting questions and asking-for- agreement questions. This study contributes to understanding how the interactive nature of the questions teachers pose can shed light on the connection between teachers’ practices and students’ learning across unfolding sequence. It argues that teacher questions are more than elicitation techniques; they are mediational interactional tools to assist participation and comprehensibility. Some examples illustrating these communicative moves of questions and their scaffolding1 Corresponding Author. Email: Yaqubi@umz.ac.irfunctions are provided. The implications for teacher education are also discussed.
ملخص الجهاز:
classroom interaction, teacher questions, unfolding sequence, participation, learning opportunity, scaffold,conversation analysis Classroom discourse is typically dominated by question and answer routines in which teachers ask most of the questions, a practice constituting one of the principal ways in which they control the discourse and push learners to contribute to classroom interaction (Brock, 1986; Walsh, 2006).
As with second language acquisition (SLA), much of the earlier L2 research has largely focused on identifying question types and creating taxonomies (Chaudron, 1988; Long & Sato, 1983; Thompson, 1997).
And' finally, it should be emphasized that this is not a theory-driven study, but a practical and data-driven one (Storch, 2002) and that its contribution to the SCT of language learning and CA lies in its practical nature and in providing evidence on how the investigation of questions as interactional products can be used to understand the connection between teachers' interactive practices and students' learning during the unfolding sequence.
Learners need varying degrees of support in their use of language or meaning-making; it is the responsibility of the teacher to shape and scaffold learning, to allow sufficient interactional space to ensure that learners are challenged while providing enough support to enable them to make themselves understood through having more participation in discourse.
Previous investigations into teacher-student talk framed by sociocultural theory have primarily focused on various forms of scaffolding (Gibbons, 2003; McNeil, 2011; Walsh, 2006), with a very few focused on questioning discourse moves (McCormick & Donato, 2000).