The language of questions

Level: 9th grade, first year of high school

Place: Kenan Evren Anatolian High School
Number of students: 30

Duration: 40 minutes

Students are going to listen conservation while observing the picture. Before they
listen, teacher directs some questions:

1. Here is a kitchen, isn’t it?

2. There is a man near the shelf. Is he wearing a green shirt?
3. What colour the woman is wearing?
4. How does man look? Is he angry or happy? (man looks clearly angry in the
picture)
5. Is the woman listening radio?

After teacher directed some questions about picture before students listen the
conservation, teacher wants them to listen and try to fill in conservation gaps.

6. Where is the event taking place?

7. How many people are there in the kitchen?
8. Are they married?
9. What cannot man find? What is he looking for?
10.Why do you think that man is so angry?
11.Do you see similar conservations between your parents?
12.Do you agree that women always control the kitchen?
13.What do you think about marriage?

QUESTION TYPE QUESTION NUMBERS

yes-no 1, 5, 8
Short answer 6, 9
display 2, 3, 4,7
referential 11, 12
Open ended 10
Non-retrieval, imaginative 13

In this lesson there was not a specific followed pattern in the questions. What I could
see is that the questions made students think carefully about what they read and so
they felt involved with the questions and challenged at the same time. Teacher tried
to ask questions from simpler to more complex.
The idea of making questions helped students to participate more in class. Questions
gave students an opportunity and a reason to speak and to share with the teacher
and classmates what they think and how they feel.

The topic was nice and motivating enough for the students to feel involved with it.
Students loved the idea of discussing about kitchen and marriage. When the T asked
them “What do you think about marriage?” most of the students were interested
about the topic and most of them raised hands. Particularly In 12th question, nearly all
of the girls said yes loudly. On the other hand, in the first questions, teacher aimed
to check the understanding and attendance of students. She tried students to involve
more and catch their attention to lesson. While doing this, yes no questions such as
1, 5 and short answer questions like 6 were really effective. Since the answers were
short, students were motivated.

“The teacher must have a clear and explicit understanding of the nature of the
challenge to students ‘internal representation of knowledge that a particular question
may present … They must appreciate the level of cognitive difficulty involved in the
students ‘effort to respond to a particular question.” (Tollefson 1989)

I agree with the quotation. I think that we teachers should always have in mind how
difficult it can be for our students to formulate an answer for one single question.
Hopefully our students always try to follow us and give themselves many chances to
answer our questions.