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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the people who helped me
accomplish this study.
First and foremost, my deepest appreciation goes to Ms. Dao Bich
Nguyen, M.A from Faculty of English at Hanoi National University of Education
for her careful supervisor, invaluable suggestions and considerable patience
through my study.
I am also grateful to the four trainee teachers and their students of grade
10 and 11 who provided vital information for the data collection process.
My grateful appreciation is owed to my teachers in Faculty of English at
Hanoi National University of Education whose lectures and experience inspired
my thesis.
It is no doubt that I would not be able to finish this study without the great
support from my family and the constructive comments and encouragement from
my friends at Hanoi National University of Education.
Lastly, my thanks go to the authors of the materials used in this study
which widened my vision of the field of language teaching.


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ABSTRACT
This study attempts to investigate the use of questioning techniques
among last- year students at Faculty of English at Hanoi National University of
Education in their second field trip. To be more specific, the study concentrates
on trainee teachers’ attitudes towards the use of questions in English classrooms,
types of questions and questioning techniques, functions of those questions, and
some suggestions on how to help the trainee teachers use questions more
effectively. In order to achieve that goal, the study uses the integration of
quantitative and qualitative research methods including classroom observations
and individual interviews. The collected data suggest that questions are made for

Table 4.1: The number questions employed by four trainee teachers in
four lessons according to Bloom’s taxonomy of questions
Table 4.2: Purposes of using questions in four lessons


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CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
I.1. Rationale
As English is the official language of over 55 countries and utilized
mostly in transaction and international cooperation, it is considered as the key to
access to human’s scientific and technological advances as well as keeping up
with the world. As a result, globally, the burning desire for learning this
international language is overwhelming. Being aware of this urgency, The
Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has introduced English into the
national curriculum as a compulsory subject. However, the question of how to
teach English effectively is always a matter for debate. As we have entered the
area of information technology, many educators try to keep up with recent
changes in teaching and learning process. Those can be named as, Nomass B. B.
(2013) discussed the advantages and disadvantages of using technology in
teaching English as a second language, Muhanna (2012) described how to apply
online games to teaching vocabulary. At the same time, others still continue do
researches on traditional techniques and skills such as organizing group work,
designing and piloting games activities. Among those skills teachers need to
master, questioning technique always attracts a lot of attention, because it plays a
vital role in teacher’s talk and directly affects the effectiveness of every lesson.
Many researchers such as Cotton K. (1988) agreed that teacher’s questions are
closely related to classroom participation, student’s performance and academic
achievement. Although a large number of linguists carried out researches related
to this topic, they only addressed the skills of teacher’s questioning (Ma, X,
2008), the way to develop fluency through questioning techniques (Aliponga J.

I.2. Aims of the study
The aim of the study is to examine the current usage of questioning
techniques among senior students at Hanoi National University of Education in
their second fieldtrip. In order to achieve this aim, the study concentrates on four
aspects, namely, trainee teachers’ attitudes towards using questioning techniques
in English classrooms, types of questions and questioning techniques employed,
functions of those questions so as to suggest how to utilize questions effectively .
I.3. Scope of the study
This study focuses on the real situation in which questions are employed
in four English lessons by trainee teachers in their fieldtrip in order to help them
improve their questioning techniques.
I.4. Research questions


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The study aims to address the following questions:
1. What are trainee teacher’s attitudes towards the use of questions in
English classroom?
2. What questions and questioning techniques do trainee teachers use in
English classes?
3. What are those question’s functions?
4. What other realities about trainee teachers’ questions and questionings
techniques are revealed?
Answers to these questions will contribute to an insight into the real
situation in which trainee teachers apply their questioning skills; thus, some
solutions can be propose to help them improve their technique in a shorter time
than they .
I.5. Methods of the study
This study employs a combination of quantitative and qualitative research
methods. To gain information related to the use of questioning techniques among

focused on the third part of this chapter. The next section provides some criteria
of a good question and a bad question, and the last part centers on questioning
techniques. The results of related studies carried out by other educators are also
synthesized in each section.
II.1. Definition of questions
As a matter of fact, questions are normally asked in both daily
communication and educational settings. A great deal of effort has been devoted
to fully define the linguistic term: question.
According to the Oxford Advanced Learner Dictionary (7 th edition), a
question is “a sentence, phrase or word that asks for information”. The Longman
Dictionary of English language, however, adds that “a sentence or phrase that is
used to ask for information or to test someone's knowledge”. The latter definition
points out the difference in the purpose of questions between the occasions when
the speaker really wants to acquire something (e.g. Where do you live?) or other
circumstances when questions are posed to check whether the listeners know
what the speaker assumes they should know (e.g. What is the synonym of
“important”?). The second purpose mentioned - the potential use of questions to
measure listener’s knowledge rather than learning it - is especially important for
analyzing questions in the classroom context. This is due to the fact that people
in daily conversations rarely pose questions to which they already know the
answers. Indeed, those questions solely happen in special situations like in a
course room court (e.g. What did the defendant do next?), in a quiz contest (e.g.
What is the most densely populated country in the world?). In contrast, in
classrooms, teachers predominantly employ questions to test students’
understanding (Peacock, 1990). Thus, the latter definition is more optimal to this
study, which focuses totally on classroom context.


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In conclusion, in this study, questions taken into consideration are


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“to assess what has been learned, and check that what has been learnt is
understood and applied”
“to test student’s memory and comprehension”
“to initiate individual and collaborative thinking in response to new
information”
“ to seek pupils’ views and opinions”
“to provide an opportunity for pupils to share their opinions/views,
seeking responses from their peers”
“to encourage creative thought and imaginative or innovative thinking”
“to foster speculation, hypothesis and idea/opinion forming”
“to create a sense of shared learning and avoid the feel of lecture”
“to challenge the level of thinking and possibly mark a change to a
higher order of thinking”
“to model higher order thinking using examples and building on
students’ responses”
(Retrieved from the website
/>Although teachers’ questions can serve various functions in different
classes with different learners, it is concluded by many researchers such as
Nunan & Lamb (1996), and Peacock (1990) that questions are mostly utilized to
check students’ understanding. To be more specific, Gall (1970) noted that 60
per cent of teacher questions were used to help students recall facts, and only 20
per cent encouraged students to think critically and the remaining 20 per cent
involved procedural matters such as classroom management.
Based on the researches mentioned above and the real situation in which
trainee teachers employ their questioning techniques, this study will indicate
some purposes given by Graham Hall and some that exist in the real situation to
find out what trainee teachers employ questioning techniques for.
II.3. Types of question

levels of cognitive thinking that the answerers need. Bloom’s taxonomy was
developed by Benjamin Bloom in 1956 and since that year, it has been applied in
numerous ways in education, especially in assisting teachers to make questions
on different levels of thinking.


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Higher level
challenge

Lower level
challenge

Figure 2: Bloom’s Taxonomy of Questions
Knowledge, which is the lowest level of the cognitive process, is a
prerequisite for all other higher levels. At the knowledge category, students are
required to exhibit memory of previous learned materials by recalling terms,
details, facts without necessarily fully comprehend the knowledge. In other
words, remembering is the main intellectual activity. As presented by Ornstein
(1987), teachers tend to stop at this type of questions account for its supporting
roles in teaching and testing. He also revealed a common view agreed by most
teachers that a student who can answers a large number of knowledge questions
might be classified as an intelligent one. However, he emphasized that
intelligence is not characterize by the amount of knowledge that a person have
but what can be done with that knowledge. Some of the key verbs can be found
in this type of questions are list, memorize, order and define. Questions can also
start with who, why, what, when, how to verify names of locations, time, and
other information. For example:
“Can you list five animals that can be found in the zoo?”

application for analyzing the given problem so as to solve it. Verbs that often
appear in analysis questions are analyze, check and distinguish. This can be
illustrated in the following examples:


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“Can you distinguish between the two grammatical functions of “late”
in the given example?”
“Why can we classify those animals into mammals and reptiles?”
The next cognitive level which requires students‘ ability to combine elements
and parts from various sources to form a new pattern not existing or clearly there
before is synthesis. With this type of questions, students use their own knowledge,
ideas and experiences in the synthesizing process; thus, there may be many potential
answers. Some of the key verbs found in the synthesizing questions are design, create,
plan and construct. Questions can be designed as follow:
“Can you write a new recipe for a tasty dish?”
“Can you create a new situation in which we can use this sentence?”
“What way would you design for your club advertisement?”
The last and highest level is evaluation. In this level, individuals make
judgment of an idea, a solution to a problem, a method or a material. Judgments
are based on criteria which might be determined by themselves or might be given
to them. Bloom places evaluation at the highest place as it requires competence
in all previous categories. However, some educators cast doubt on the relation
between higher-order question asking and higher-order thinking. Others argue
that lower-order questions can have the same effect as the higher-order questions
can. There will be no correct answer for evaluation questions, and verbs often
associated with the evaluation level are judge, predict, believe and argue. Some
examples of evaluation questions will be listed below:
“Do you believe?”
“Do you think his behavior is good or bad?”

 Mastery of subject matter

who, when, where

 Understanding information
and grasp meaning

Summarize, describe,

 Translating knowledge into

interpret, contrast,

new context

predict, associate,

 Interpreting facts, comparing,

distinguish, estimate,

ordering, grouping, inferring

differentiate, discuss,

causes & predicting

extend.

consequences

 Using old ideas to create new

infer
Combine, integrate,

ones

modify, rearrange,

 Generalizing from given facts

substitute, plan, create,

 Relating knowledge from

design, invent, what if,

several areas

compose, formulate,

 Predicting, drawing

prepare, generalize,

conclusions
 Comparing and

rewrite
Assess, decide, rank,

Some educators simplified the Bloom’s taxonomy of questions into lower
cognitive questions, which require learners to recall information, demonstrate
their understanding of specific subject matter and higher cognitive questions,
which ask students to use higher cognitive level to produce and support their
answers.
There have been a numbers of researches carried out to investigate the
cognitive level of teacher’s questions in second language teaching. Most of the
researchers arrive at the conclusion that lower-cognitive level questions are used
more frequently in compared with higher-cognitive level ones. For example,
Nunan and Lamb (1996) point out that most questions asked have lower level
challenge, and they also mention that this type of questions is not useful to
stimulate students to think. Besides, Natthanan (2009) indicates that the lowest
cognitive

question-

knowledge

questions

were

predominant.

Then,

comprehension questions, application questions, analysis questions, synthesis
questions and evaluation questions followed respectively, which matches the
order of the Bloom’s taxonomy.
II.3.2. Open-ended questions and closed-ended questions

Based on the purposes of questions, questions can be divided into
referential questions and display questions. In social communication, people
normally ask questions that that they do not know the answers, and the meaning
of the utterance can be negotiated by the questioner and the answerer; however,
this does not often happen in the classroom. Teachers tend to address questions
which are already given appropriate answers to in their mind.
As stated by Ellis (1994), referential questions and display questions are
respectively defined as “questions you ask someone because you do not know the
answer” and “questions you ask to see if the person you are talking to knows the
answer”. In an English language classroom, while display questions are often
utilized to check whether students understand or remember knowledge,


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referential questions require them to provide information, give opinions, explain
or clarify.
A number of studies have been conducted to compare the use of
referential questions and display questions in foreign language classes. It is
uncommon to use display questions outside the classroom (Nunan and Lamb,
1996). Long and Sato (1983), who compare questions made by six teachers in
English classrooms with questions in daily conversations between native
speakers and non-native speakers, concluded that display questions ( questions
that the questioner already knows the answer) were predominant in classrooms.
Similar findings are reported by Tsui (1985) and Lynch (1991), who reached the
conclusion that
“Referential (information seeking) questions, which predominate in native
speaker –non-native speaker conversation outside the classroom (76% of all
questions asked) made up a mere 14% of questions asked by teachers. These
results suggest that contrary to recommendation by many writers on second
language teaching methodologies, the communicative use of the target language

them easier for the students to catch the main content so as to understand and be
able to answer them more quickly.
Moreover, Lewis.G. stated that questions should be posed “simply in
conversational English”.
Despite the fact that each question is used for a specific reason; some are
designed to stimulate students’ thought, others simply repeat the content of the
lecture presented before, it is widely agreed that questions that stimulate critical
thinking are considered better and of greater value.
With regard to the limitation in scope, students should be asked only one
or two points of the lesson.
Lastly, questions should be adapted to the level of the class. It means that
teachers need to pose questions that are suitable for the kinds of students in the
class. In other words, no matter what functions do those questions have, they
should not excess the students ‘competence of thinking. If not, the students can
easily get depressed and students ‘learning can even be de-motivated.
Nevertheless, it does not mean that teachers should only pose easy questions to
low- achieving students.
While good questions play an important role in facilitating students’
learning, bad questions may not only make students hesitate over the way to


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answer the questions, answer them incorrectly but also provoke some negative
attitudes toward study (Brualdi, 1998). Having a full awareness of the adverse
impact of bad questions on students ‘learning process, many researchers have
devoted considerable effort to investigate mistakes that teachers makes when
asking questions. As listed by Arslan M. (2006), they are posing vague questions
like “What do you think of the content of the story?”, using trick questions or
questions whose content is too challenging for the learners. It can be seen when a
kindergarten teacher asks her students to explain what geothermal power is. In

situation is when wait-time is given but teacher still does not receive any responses.
In a language classroom, there have been a number of questioning
strategies used to elicit students’ responses and facilitate their studying such as
repetition, rephrasing, simplification or providing extra information. In language
teaching handbooks and researches related to this topic, authors classified
questioning techniques differently; nevertheless, their ideas have similarities. For
example, repetition is an important technique and used more frequently
(Ekasingh (1991) and Morrow (1997)); moreover, five questioning techniques
including

repetition,

rephrasing,

simplification,

probing

along

with

decomposition are often mentioned.
Based on the ideas of other educators, especially Wu’s taxonomy of
questioning techniques (1993) and the researcher’s own experience and
awareness of the real situation of questioning techniques employed by trainee
teachers, this study will focus on the way in which trainee teachers may react to
the silence in classes after raising the first questions in both situations with and
without wait-time. The first technique is repetition with which the teacher repeats
the initial questions with the hope that the students can answer it. Secondly, the

studying for 3 years, they are assumed to achieve B2 level- upper-intermediate
level- corresponding to CEFR – Common European Framework of Reference,
which means they can understand the main ideas of complex text on a variety of
topics even field of specialization, naturally interact with native speakers with a
degree of fluency, and produce clear and detailed utterances on different topics. In
addition, it is reported that their speaking - listening score for the previous semester
were B and B+, which means their average points varied from 7 to 8.4. Therefore,
their listening and speaking skills can be considered as good.
According to the curriculum of their faculty, in the first three years, the four
trainee teachers enrolled on three courses on teaching methodology, namely
“Methodology 1”, “Methodology 2” and “Methodology 3”, they have basic
knowledge of second language teaching methodology, a variety of teaching
approaches, the language acquisition process. However, there are not any courses
designed to provide them with comprehensive knowledge of questioning techniques
or train them how to pose questions effectively in language classrooms.


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This six-week-field trip is the second field trip that those trainee teachers
take part in. During the second field trip, each trainee teacher is required to
conduct at least six lessons.
Overall, the trainee teachers participating in this study are chose on the
basis of 3 criteria. Initially, all of them have been studying for at least 14 years;
furthermore, their linguistic competence reach B2 level- upper-intermediatelevel corresponding to CEFR – Common European Framework of Reference.
They have not joined any courses which focus on questioning techniques. The
last factor is the trainee teachers’ availability to take part in the study.
III.2. Data collection instruments
A combination of quantitative and qualitative approach in the forms of
individual interviews and class observations is employed to investigate the real
situations in which trainee teachers used questioning techniques in their field trip

The researcher designs the second part with 7 questions to gain in-depth
information about the frequency of posing English questions in each English
lesson, the trainee teachers’ satisfaction with their questioning techniques, the
purposes of questions and some habits when the trainee teachers posing
questions. Although each question has its suggested answers to save time, the
participants are still provided extra time to add their own opinions.
After, the participants complete the first and second parts by themselves in
about 10 minutes and they go to the last part, which aims to investigate the
trainee teachers’ difficulties when they pose questions and the potential solutions
to increase the effectiveness of trainee teachers’ question.
This data collecting method brings three major advantages. Firstly, it equips
the interviewer with a degree of control over the topic and the course of the
interview. The interviewer has the general ideas of how the interview would be
carried out and what might be possible results. It also offers interviewer a great deal
of flexibility to follow responses of the interviewees. Lastly, this type of interview
can provide an in-depth sight into others’ lives as Dowett ( 1986) stated “ (the semistructured interview) is quite extraordinary- the interactions are incredibly rich and
the data indicate that you can produce extraordinary evidence about life that you
don’t get in structured interviews or questionnaire methodology- no matter how
open ended and qualitative you think your questionnaires are attempting to be. It is
not only qualitative research technique that will produce rich information about
social relationships but it does give you access to social relationships in a quite
profound way”.