Questioning Techniques and Student Participation

Abstract

This paper investigates the use of Cole & Chan’s (1987) questioning techniques to see the factors affecting the success of their use. The study was conducted with three native teachers of English who used the same topic in three classes of undergraduate students in the Engineering Faculty of a Thai university. The research instrument was the transcripts from the video recording of the classes. The results of the study indicate that the teachers varied in their use of questioning techniques to help their students answer questions. While ‘redirecting’ was the only technique that none of the teachers used, the most successful technique was ‘prompting’. However, the success of teachers’ questioning did not depend on the numbers of techniques used. It can be concluded that, in order to get students’ participation when asking questions, teachers should be aware of the difficulty level of the questions in terms of such matters as students’ language proficiency and background knowledge, waiting time and classroom atmosphere.