Comparison of Questions Used by Teachers with Expertise and Little Expertise in Elementary English Classes

Teachers’ pedagogical questions in a language classroom play a central role in students’ language and cognitive development. The purpose of this study was to compare the questions used by teachers with expertise and little expertise in the 5 th grade-level elementary English classes and find what types of questions were used in common, and whether and how they were used differently among the teachers. This study also attempted to discover whether different question types were used depending on students’ levels of English. Video-recorded English lessons of 3 excellent teachers and 3 general teachers were transcribed and analyzed according to the functional aspects and cognitive aspects of questions, adapted from Long & Sato (1983) and Cunningham (1987). The analysis of the data led to the finding that expert teachers used more referential questions, comprehension check questions, and confirmation check questions in the main pedagogical activities of the lesson than the teachers with little expertise. In terms of cognitive questions, memory questions and convergent questions were predominantly used by all the teachers. Lastly, the teachers’ questions didn’t reflect students’ different levels of English ability. The findings of the study have suggestions for teacher education, teaching, and research.