Teacher questioning in CLIL lessons: how to enhance teacher-students interaction
5. Considerations: Some questioning techniques
The analysis carried out on teacher questioning for this research has shown that it is possible to highlight some common devices and rules which could help teachers to enhance students’ inter-action:
1. It is necessary to plan questions before the CLIL lesson; otherwise teachers risk limiting their input to convergent, closed questions. If they write down the questions they want to pose their students in the different lesson phases, they will be certain they won’t miss out the divergent type;
2. Questions that stimulate most oral speech by students should be simple, short, and easy to understand. Depending on the students’ level of foreign language competence, teachers should facilitate linguistic input, primarily with regard to grammatical and syntactic com-plexity (e.g. use of active voice versus passive voice, use of parataxis versus hypotaxis, etc.) 3. They should neither be closed nor should they limit the range of choices (“What would
you choose to complete it, server packet or client packet?”), nor even suggest the answers (“Why? Because it can’t ---”). When possible, solutions should not be evident to the stu-dent, to the other classmates or, sometimes, to the teacher himself;
4. The most effective questions should be process-oriented rather than product-oriented.
That is, they require students’ thinking on ‘how’ and ‘why’ rather than on ‘what’. Such complex questions could be problematic for those students with lower competence in the foreign language or in the subject matter, since they would consider applying content knowledge while expressing themselves through a foreign language as a double obstacle to overcome. The difficulty deriving from the CLIL double objectives, however, cannot be solved by limiting input to Yes/No questions, or to questions to which the teachers already
know the answers, but rather by applying questioning techniques like the one proposed in point 6 below;
5. Teachers should alternate all types of questions, both closed and divergent, lower and higher order;
6. It is highly important to pause for few seconds after the question. This waiting time (Rowe 1972 in Stahl 1994)15 allows students to think about the request and formulate correct utterances using the foreign language. As a result, students will be more motivated to an-swer and get used to expressing meaning.
What’s more, in order to favour students’ oral production, teachers should provide them with the specific vocabulary needed to speak about the content subject; this can be done at the begin-ning of the lesson, with activities (e.g. brainstorming) that review words and expressions needed for that CLIL lesson. This phase is necessary in order to stimulate both students’ “active” and
“passive” vocabulary. Although they learn a word, it takes a lot of practice and context connec-tions for them to reach competence in using that word. Regularly revising the required vocabu-lary means supplying students with fundamental tools for communication and laying the ground for new knowledge acquisition.
6. Conclusion
The research carried out on CLIL classes in order to investigate teacher-students interaction showed that the main type of classroom organisation model used by teachers was the teacher-fronted mode. However, the aim of this investigation was to find some possible devices in order to enhance students’ oral production; thus the need for turning traditional whole-classroom les-sons into students-centred lesles-sons, enhancing teacher-students interaction and giving pupils an active role in the learning process was immediately manifest.
Given that —except in the case of primary school children— the more the cognitive effort required, the more the learner is involved in the topic, teachers should provide challenging input if they want their students to intervene and to be involved. Teacher questions are the most com-mon pedagogical techniques used in class but, generally, they prove not to be adequately formu-lated. Teachers do ask questions, but it seems they are not willing to spend too much time on certain phases of the lesson “letting students talk”. Classroom interaction seems like a luxury teachers cannot afford because of the strict pace of the curriculum, so they decide to limit stu-dents’ production in order to “get the syllabus requirements done”. That is why they prefer keep-ing the control of the classroom, a control determined by their talk time, which overrides stu-dent-talk time for almost the whole lesson (data collected in this research showed that teachers occupied more that 80 % of the time available in the recorded CLIL lessons).
15. Stahl (1985 in Stahl 1994) coined the concept of ‘think-time’, defined as “a distinct period of uninter-rupted silence by the teacher and all students so that they both can complete appropriate information processing tasks, feelings, oral responses, and actions”. He prefers to refer to ‘think-time’ rather than to ‘wait-time’ for three reasons: “(1) It names the primary academic purpose and activity of this period of silence--to allow students and the teacher to complete on-task thinking; (2) There are numerous places where periods of silence are as important as those ‘wait-time periods’ reported in the research literature; (3) There is at least one exception, labelled “impact pause-time”, that allows for periods of less than 3 seconds of uninterrupted silence” (Stahl 1990 in Stahl 1994).
A change towards student centeredness is compulsory and effective teacher questioning could favour this move. The research data illustrated above are evidence of a common way of running classroom interaction; display/convergent and lower-order questions are the most frequent types of questions asked by teachers. The problem is that, instead of employing them just at the beginning of the lesson in order to revise previous knowledge on contents, teachers are used to posing this type of closed questions all throughout the lesson time, not allowing students to practice the foreign lan-guage and higher thinking skills extensively, both of which are essential for their cognitive growth.
This paper proposes some questioning techniques which have originated from the analysis of the research data and ensuing reflection on the findings. If used in class, they could enhance stu-dent’s active participation and oral production as they encourage students to elaborate complex and articulated responses - using the foreign language - while exploring the content subject. Apart from those suggestions, however, the need for teachers to receive specific training in pedagogic strategies to promote interaction in teacher-fronted classroom organizations is manifest, espe-cially within a CLIL context, considering the acquisition theories discussed at the beginning of the present paper. An important step would be accomplished if teachers reviewed and reflected on their own practice and if that practice were strictly interrelated to theory and research in order to favour future teacher development.
7. References
Baker, C. (1996). Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Philadelphia: Multilin-gual Matters.
Barnes, C. P. (1983). Questioning in college classrooms. In C.L. Ellner & C. P. Barnes, ed., Studies of College Teaching. MA.: Lexington Books.
Behnam, B. & Y. Pouriran (2009). Classroom discourse: analyzing teacher/learner interactions in Iranian EFL task-based classrooms. Porta Linguarum 12: 117-132.
Beyer, B. (1987). Practical Strategies for the Teaching of Thinking. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, Blake, L. (2007). Interactive whole class teaching and pupil learning: Theoretical and practical Inc.
implications. Language and Education 21 (4): 271-283.
Bloom, B. S., ed. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. The Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. New York: Longman.
Commission of the European Communities. (1995). White Paper: Teaching and Learning-Towards the Learning Society. Objective IV. Bruxelles: Council of Europe.
Coonan, C. M. (2002). La Lingua Straniera Veicolare. Torino: UTET.
Coyle, D. (2007). Content and language integrated learning: Towards a connected research agenda for CLIL pedagogies. The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingual-ism 10 (5): 545-562.
Darn, S. (2006). Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL): A European Overview.
ERIC. [Internet document available at http://www.eric.ed.gov/ # ED490775. Last access 12.02.2010]
Degarmo, C. (1911). Interest and Education. The Doctrine of Interest and its Concrete Application.
London: Macmillan & Co., LTD.
Doff, A. (1988). Teaching English: A Training Course for Teachers (Trainers’ Handbook). Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ellis, R. (1994). The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
English, E., L. Hargreaves & J. Hislam (2002). Pedagogical dilemmas in the national literacy strategy: Primary teachers’ perceptions, reflections and classroom behaviour. Cambridge Jour-nal of Education 32 (1): 9-26.
Fischer, C.G., & G. E. Grant (1983). Intellectual levels in college classrooms. In C.L. Ellner
& C.P. Barnes, eds., Studies of college teaching. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath.
Gibbons, P. (2203). Mediating language learning: Teacher interactions with ESL students in a content-based classroom. TESOL Quarterly 37 (2): 247-273.
Järvinen, H. M. (n.d.). Language in content instruction. Issues in promoting language and learning in CLIL type provision. [Internet document available at http://lici.utu.fi/materials/article_
jarvinen.pdf. Last access 12.02.2010]
Krashen, S. D. (1981). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. English Language Teaching Series. London: Prentice-Hall International.
Levin. T. & R. Long (1981). Effective Instruction. Washington DC: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
McComas, W. F. & L. Abraham (2005). Asking more effective questions. [Internet document available at http://www.usc.edu/programs/cet/private/pdfs/usc/Asking_Better_Questions.
pdf. Last access 12.02.2010]
Marsh, D. (2002). CLIL/EMILE – The European Dimension: Actions, Trends and Foresight Po-tential. Bruxelles: The European Union.
Marsh, D., B. Marsland & K. Stenberg (2001). Integrating competences for Working Life.
Finland:University of Jyvaskyla, Unicom.
Menegale, M. (2008a). Tipi di domande utilizzate durante la lezione frontale partecipata e out-put degli studenti. In C.M. Coonan, ed., La produzione orale in ambito CLIL. Monographic number of Rassegna Italiana di Linguistica Applicata 39 (1-2): 117-145.
Menegale, M. (2008b). Expanding teacher-student interaction through more effective class-room questions: from traditional teacher-fronted lessons to student-centred lessons in CLIL.
In C.M. Coonan, ed., CLIL e l’apprendimento delle lingue. Le sfide del nuovo ambiente di ap-prendimento. Venezia: Libreria Cafoscarina. 105-127. [Internet document available at http://
lear.unive.it/bitstream/10278/1005/1/05Menegale.pdf. Last access 12.02.2010]
Menegale, M. (2009). Class activities aimed at enhancing oral production in CLIL-based les-sons. In G. Raţă, ed., Language Education Today: Between Theory and Practice. Cambridge:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Myhill, D. & F. Dunkin (2005). Questioning Learning. Language and Education 19 (5): 415-Nunan, D. (1991). Language Teaching Methodology Hertfordshire. Prentice Hall International.427.
Nunn, R. (1999). The purposes of language teachers’ questions. IRAL 37 (1): 23-42.
Nunn, R. (2001). Language learning across boundaries-negotiating classroom rituals”, TESL-EJ 5 (2). [Internet document available at http://tesl-ej.org/ej18/toc.html. Last access 12.02.2010]
Pavesi, M., D. Bertocchi, M. Hofmannová & M. Kazianka (2001). Introducing CLIL. Inseg-nare in una lingua straniera. Unterrichten durch eine Fremdsprache. Teaching through a foreign language. Enseñar en una lengua extranjera. Einseigner dans une langue vivante. Milano: Minis-tero Istruzione, Università, Ricerca. [Internet document available at http://digilander.libero.
it/dibiasio.neoassunti/TEMATICA7/Sviluppare/Content.pdf. last access 12.02.2010]
Sanders, N. M. (1966). Classroom Questions: What Kinds? New York: Harper & Row.
Stahl, R. J. (1994). Using “Think-Time” and “Wait-Time” Skilfully in the Classroom. ERIC
Edu-cational Reports. [Internet document available at http://www.ericdigests.org/1995-1/think.
htm. Last access 12.02.2010]
Suter, C. (2001). Exploring teachers’ questions and feedback. [Internet document available at http://www.cels.bham.ac/uk/resources/essays/suter1.pdf. Last access 12.02.2010]
Watts, M., S. Alsop, G. Gouls & A. Walsch (1997). Prompting teachers’ constructive reflec-tion: Pupils’ questions as critical incidents. International Journal of Science Education 19 (9):
1025-1037.
Wilen, W., (1991). Questioning Skills for Teachers. Third Edition. Washington DC: National Educational Association.
Willis, J. (1996). A Framework for Task-Based Learning. London: Longman.
Wode, H. (1999). Incidental vocabulary acquisition in the foreign language classroom. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 21: 243-258.