The effects of teachers' questioning behaviour on ESL classroom interaction / Kamisah Ariffin and Misyana Susanti Husin

One of the important elements in classroom interaction is teacher’s questions. These questions may serve many pragmatic functions such as eliciting student response, enacting social relationship, reprimanding or reiterating. This paper, however, is more interested in examining the effects of teacher’s questioning behaviour on interaction pattern in ESL classroom. The study seeks to find out: 1) the types of questions used by teachers in the classroom, and; 2) the amount of classroom interaction created based on the types of questions asked. The analysis of the data shows that teachers preferred to use more display questions rather than referential questions in their classroom instructions. This is because the former was able to promote more active participation from the students compared to the latter. The findings, thus, imply that teachers need to exploit their questioning behaviour to promote interaction in the classroom.