Using eliciting question as a technique to teach english to 11th form pupils

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For the completion of this study, I have been fortunate to receive
invaluable contribution from many people.
First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor,
M.A Nguyễn Thị Võn Lam for her absolutely indispensable assistance,
excellent suggestions, advice and detailed critical comments, without which
the study would not have been completed.
I would also like to offer my indebtness to all my lecturers at the
Department of Foreign Languages – Vinh University for their endless
enthusiasm and undeniable useful lectures.
In addition, this study also owes its accomplishment to the teachers and
pupils at Nam Đàn I high school, Nghệ An province, where I had a two-month
period of teaching practice because they helped me a lot in information
collection.
My warmest thanks are due to my loving family, my friends for all thing
they have done for me.
Finally, I am all to aware that despite all the advice and assistance, I feel
that the project is far from perfect; it is, therefore, my sole responsibility for
any inadequacies and shortcomings that the thesis may be considered to have.

Vinh, May 2004
Đào Thị Thanh Hường

1


ABSTRACT
Eliciting questions are sure to be useful for teaching and learning
English. They make the lessons more interesting and attractive.
They also make students more motivated to study. The study of
“Using eliciting questions as a technique to teach English to 11th

form pupils” is an attempt to provide a basic understanding about
English questions and questioning techniques. The advantages of
using eliciting questions and some ways to exploit eliciting
questions to teach English to 11th form pupils are also mentioned.
The two survey questionaires made to the teachers and pupils at
high schools provide the reality basic for us to suggest some
questioning strategies to help teachers know how to apply
questioning techniques to teach English.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

2


ABSTRACT
TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART A INTRODUCTION

1.The Reasons for Choosing the Study

4

2. The Aims of the Study

5

3. The Methods of the Study

5

4. The Scope of the Study

5

5. The Design of the Study

5

PART B

DEVELOPEMENT

CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1.1 English Questions

7

1.1.1 Definition

7

1.1.2 Question Types
7
1.2

Questioning

11

1.2.1 Aims of Questioning

12

1.2.2 Criteria for Effective Questioning

13

1.2.3 Ways of Exploiting Questioning Techniques
in English Teaching

14

1.3 Summary
CHAPTER 2

16
USING ELICITING QUESTIONS TO TEACH
ENGLISH TO 11th FORM PUPILS

2.1 The Advantages of Using Eliciting questions
in English Teaching

18

3

2.2 Some Ways of Exploiting Eliciting questions
in English Teaching

18

2.2.1 Using Eliciting questions to Help Pupils Understand
More about the Lesson

18

2.2.2 Using Eliciting questions to Check the Concept, the Meaning
of Words and Structures

20

2.3 The Situation of Using Questioning Techniques at High
Schools in Vietnam

22

2.3.1 Teacher’s Using Questions by Feeling, without Clear Aim

22

2.3.2 No Chance for Pupils to Practice Questions
Communicatively

22

2.3.3 Pupils’ Uneven English Level

22

2.4 Findings

23

2.5 Summary

25

CHAPTER 3 SUGGESTED QUESTIONING STRATEGIES
3.1 Suggested Questioning Strategies

26

3.1.1 Student Questions

26

3.1.2 Teacher Questions

26

3.1.3 Somes Steps and Suggestions for Planning Questions

27

3.1.4 Strategies to Make Classrooms Less “Imperative” and
More “Interrogative”

30

3.1.5 Shaping to Pupils’ Responses

30

3.2 Particular Examples of Using Eliciting Questions

32

PART C

CONCLUSION

1. Recapitulation

34

2. Suggestions for Further Studies

34

APPENDICES
4


Survey Questionaire 1
Survey Questionaire 2

BIBLIOGRAPHY

5


PART A INTRODUCTION
1. The Reasons for Choosing the Study
Embarking on a new era, the era of science and technology in which
informatics and biology have been strongly developing, each country that
wants to join in the world community to exchange trade and technology as
well as other fields and learn from the others, has to carry out open-door
policies. In that process, English, the international language, plays a very
important role to link the countries together.
Realizing the importance of English, Vietnamese learners have been
spending much time and money, paying much attention to study English so
that their English can be improved. On the parallel, the teachers keep finding
and applying better methods with more effective techniques with a view to
help their students. One of the techniques they find useful is questioning.
Language teachers ask a lot of questions in class. Questions made by the
teachers, however, do not always bring good results as they expected.
The effort of this study is to investigate into questioning techniques,
and using eliciting questions to teach English to the eleventh form pupils, and
to help pupils find learning English interesting.
Another reason why the study has been carried out lies in the author’s
desire to polish up her teaching skills. To be a future teacher of English, the
author hopes to have a good knowledge as well as effective methods of
teaching to help her future pupils. Having been working as a tutor of English
for many secondary pupils, the author realizes that pupils react to eliciting
questions very actively. They are eager to answer questions and more
motivated to study. Doing this study helps the author understand more about

questioning techniques and know how to use this useful technique effectively
in her future teaching.

6


There are other reasons for choosing the study, but the above reasons are
the main ones that encourage the author to choose the thesis: “Using eliciting
questions as a technique to teach English to 11th form pupils”.

2. The Aims of the Study
For the reasons mentioned above, the study has been done in order to
present some ideas about questioning techniques.
The study also aims to provide some ways to exploit eliciting questions to
teach English to 11th form pupils and some suggested ways to use questioning
techniques effectively in class.

3. The Methods of the Study
The strategic method of the study is the qualitative one which is employed
to describe and analyze the data of the study.

4. The Scope of the Study
This thesis is about using eliciting questions to teach English to 11th form
pupils.

5. The Design of the Study
The thesis consists of three main parts:
Part A, “ Introduction”, presents the reasons for choosing the study, the
aims, methods, scope and also the design of the study.
Part B,“Development”, consists of three main chapters:

The first chapter provides the theoretical background. Firstly, a basic
understanding about English questions is introduced, that is about its
definition, four ways to classify its types. Secondly, some main ideas about
questioning technique are also presented. The second chapter provides some

7


ways of using eliciting questions in teaching English to 11 th form pupils. In
this chapter, the advantages of using eliciting questions in teaching English,
some ways of exploiting eliciting questions to teach English and the situation
of using questioning techniques at high schools in Vietnam are mentioned in
detail. This chapter also presents the result of the two survey questionaires
made to the teachers and pupils at high schools. The third chapter is about
suggested ways to make questions in class and particular examples of using
eliciting questions to teach English to 11th form pupils.
Part C, “Conclusion”, concludes the whole thesis and gives suggested
ideas for further studies.

8


PART B DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER1

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 English Questions
1.1.1 Definition
A question is a sentence, a phrase even just a gesture that shows that the

speakers or writers want the readers or listeners to supply them with some
information to perform a task or in some other ways satisfy the request (web
site: www.usingenglish.com).

1.1.2 Question types
 According to Quick et.al. (1973:191), questions can be divided into
three major classes according to the type of answer they expect:
(1) Those that expect only affirmative or rejection (as in Have you
finished the book?) are YES-NO questions.
(2) Those that expect a reply supplying an item of information (as in what
is your name? How old are you?) are WH-questions.
(3) Those that expect as the reply one of two or more options presented
in the questions are ALTERNATIVE questions; for example: Would you like
to go for a walk or stay at home?
 According to Bàng, et. al. (2001:72), in grammar, English questions
are classified into the following types:
(i) Yes/No questions
Placing the operator before the subject and giving the sentence a rising
intonation usually form Yes/No questions.
For example:
- Do you drink tea?
- Can you swim?
9


- Did he go to the university?
- Are they coming to the party?
Yes/No questions are especially useful for checking comprehension. They
are often the easiest questions to answer. They do not require students to
produce new language.

(ii) “Or” questions
The “or” questions are formed in exactly the same way as Yes/No questions,
but contain two final elements and differ in intonation; instead of the final
rising tone, they contain a separate nucleus for each alternative: a rise occurs
on each item in the list, except the last, on which there is a fall, indicating that
the list is completed.
For example:
- Do you prefer tea or coffee?
- Are they brothers or just friends?
- Will you walk or go by bus?
- Did she study in U.K or in the US?
(iii) WH-questions
The questions are also called “information questions”. With most whquestions, it is natural to give a short answer. The questions are formed in the
same way as yes/no questions, but they begin with a “wh-word”-“when,
where, why, what, how, how long, how much, how many”,etc. are included
as wh-words.
For example:
- What do you usually drink?
- Where did she study?
- How long have they known each other?
- When are you leaving?

10


Some wh-questions with “who” or “what” have the same structure as a
normal sentence. They are called “subject”, because they ask about the
subject of the sentence.
For example:
- Something happened  what happened? (Not what did happen?)

- Someone saw him  who saw him?
(iv) Tag questions
A tag question consists of an operator plus a pronoun, with or without a
negative particle; the choice and tense of the operator are determined by the
verb phrase in the superordinate clause.
For example:
- You are a student, aren’t you?
- That boy can’t swim, can he?
 However, in Bàng, et. al. (2001:73), in language teaching, questions
could be categorized under a variety of headings:
(i) Display and referential questions
Display questions are those, which ask for information, which the
questioner already knows. For example, when teacher asks students for
information that is in the text, and the teacher has already read the text and
knows the answers, those are display questions. Teachers usually ask such
questions in order that students can display to teachers whether or not they
have read and understood the text.
Referential questions, on the other hand, are those, which ask for information,
which the questioner does not already know. For example, when teachers ask
students about the opinions, experiences, or ideas about how to apply what is
in a text that the class has read, the questions are referential ones. These are
the types of questions that are most often asked outside the classroom.
However, most teachers ask more display questions.

11


(ii) Closed and open questions
Closed questions are those for which a short answer is usually provided.
For example, people usually give very short answers to questions such as

“How old are you?’ and “What is your favourite fruit?”. Closed questions do
not supply people with much opportunity to create language output.
Open questions, in contrast, are those to which a relative longer answer is
usually provided. For example, for the same topics as are involved in the
questions in the previous paragraph we could ask such open questions as:
“Why do you like that fruit so much?”. Open questions supply students with
opportunities to create longer responses. However, most teachers ask more
closed questions.
(iii) Convergent and divergent questions
Convergent questions are those to which there is usually one possible
right answer. Factual questions are usually convergent. Answer to convergent
questions can be short or long.
For example:
- What is the fastest way to get from here to the university?
- Who won the world cup in 1994?
Divergent questions, on the other hand, have many possible right
answers. The classic divergent question is “What does the cloud remind you
of?”. Divergent questions are recommended for encouraging creativity. They
are very good for problem solving where many possibilities need to be
considered. However, most teachers ask more convergent questions.


Bloom’s

taxonomy

(quoted

in

Bàng,

et.

al.

2001:75)

In the 1950s, Benjamin Bloom of the University of Chicago develope
taxonomy of questions designed to encourage teacher to ask more deep
thinking questions. This is presented below with example:
(i) Knowledge questions ask students to remember or recognise
information that is in their textbook or was told them by the teacher,e.g:
12


Where is the Amazon rainforest?
What are three fossil fuels?
When students have already been given this information.
(ii) Comprehension questions ask for understanding
Example:

“Explain how the greenhouse effect occurs.”
“What is the main cause of global warming?”

(iii) Application questions ask people to use their understanding, e.g:
“Do you think that the global warming will get worse? Why?”. “From
your experience, why don’t people recycle more thing?”
(iv) Analysis questions ask people to look at the individual parts of
situation, e.g:

“Compare two different types of packaging in terms of their effect on the
environment.”, “What are the reasons for and against the use of solar
powered cars?”
(v) Synthetic questions ask people to use their skills to create new ideas
by combining or restructuring ideas, e.g:
“what would a plan for saving water in your community look like?”,
“What can be done so that poor people can have clean drinking water and
sanitary facilities without doing too much damage to the envinronment?”
(vi) Evaluation questions ask people to make judgements, e.g:
“Should we protect plants and animals even if they are of no value to
human?” “Should the proposed new high way be built?”

1.2 Questioning
Questioning is a universally used activation technique in teaching, that is,
the teacher uses questions as a technique in his/her teaching, mainly within
the Initiation-Response-Feedback pattern. However, teacher’s questions are
not always realized by interrogatives. For example, the question: “ what can

13


you see in the picture?” may be expressed by a statement: “we’ll describe
what is going on this picture.” or by the command: “Tell me what you can
see in this picture.”
Therefore, perhaps a question, in the context of teaching, may be best
defined as a teacher’s utterance, which has the objective of eliciting an oral
response from the learner(s).

1.2.1 Aims of Questioning
In class, questions are used for various aims. According to Dung

(1997:133), teachers use questions in many stages of the lesson.
 In linguistic material introducing stage, questions are used to:
- Warm up the atmosphere before coming to new lesson
- Lead-in new lesson
- Set situation, context
- Stimulate communication need
- Give requirements, task to activities
- Give guiding questions to help students grasp new knowledge
- Check how students understand the new linguistic material
already introduced.
 In practice stage, questions are used to:
- Check the content of a reading comprehension or listening
comprehension
- Practice new linguistic material
- Direct, suggest, make students concentrate on main points or points
needing to be discussed carefully so that students can understand the
lesson better.
- Practice listening and speaking skills
- Get information from students (facts, ideas, opinions)

14


 Using questions to test and assess student’s abilities
- Use questions to test and assess

1.2.2 Criteria for Effective Questioning
There have been numerous attempts to identify characteristics of
effective questioning techniques in the classroom. Questions have been
classified according to various different criteria: what kind of thinking they

try to elicit (plain recall, for example, analysis or evaluation); whether they
are “genuine” or “display” questions (does the teacher really want to know
the answer or is he or she simply checking if the students do?); whether they
are closed or open-ended (do they have a single right answer or many) and
many others.
However, here, we only define “effective questions” in terms of the
desired response. As language teachers, our motive in questioning is usually
to get our students to engage with the language material actively though
speech; so an effective questioning technique is one that elicits fairly prompt,
motivated, relevant and full responses. If, on the other hand, our questions
result in long silence, or are only answered by the strongest students or
obviously bore the class, or consistently elicit only very brief or unsuccessful
answers, then there is probably something wrong. Here are some useful
criteria for effective questioning for language teachers, according to Bàng et.
al. (2001:76),

1. Clarity: do the learners immediately grasp not only what the
question means, but also what kind of an answer is required?
2. Learning value: does the question stimulate thinking and responses
that will contribute to further learning of the target material? Or
is it irrelevant, unhelpful or merely time- filling?

15


3. Interest: do learners find the question interesting, challenging,
stimulating?
4. Availability: can most of the members of the class try to answer
it? Or only the more advanced, confident, knowledgeable?
5. Extention: does the question invite and encourage extended

and /or varied answers?
6. Teacher reaction: are the learners sure that their responses will
be related to with respect, that they will not be put down or
ridiculed if they say something inappropriate?

1.2.3 Ways of Exploiting Questioning Techniques in
English Teaching
 Using questions to exploit students’available general knowledge
Before teaching a new lesson, the teacher can ask some questions to
exploit students’ available background knowledge as well as direct, lead
students’ attention to new content.
The questions asked before a reading or listening lesson are the
representative examples for this type of questions. The decisive aim of these
questions is to ask for the following contents:
- What do you know?
- What don’t you know?
- Do you want to find more?
 Using questions to give reasons for the next activities carried out
meaningfully
Before teaching a new lesson, teachers can ask questions which, to
answer them, students have to carried out a task or a next requirement such as
reading, listening, interviewing, etc. In other words, these questions make the

16


reading, listening, interviewing activities more motivated. Also, as a result,
they make the exercise implemented more meaningfully.
For example:
- Do you know what the longest river/ highest mountain/ biggest lake in

the world?
Read/Listen and find out.
- Does your friend like these things? (List)
Talk to him and find out.

 Using questions to set language situations and contexts
Situations or contexts are very important for students to learn language.
The situation supplies them necessary information to carry out activities.
Teachers can ask questions and use some pictures to set language situation.
For example: Look at the picture (supply them with a picture)
Where are these people? How do you know?
 Using questions to exploit necessary vocabulary for a new lesson
For example:
- Make a list of words you can use to describe your house.
- Think of the words and expressions you can add to the following list to
describe a person.
+ Appearance: tall, short…
+ Character: friendly, helpful…
+ Habits: getting up early, talk fast…

 Reading comprehension/ listening comprehension questions
There are questions popularly used by teachers for teaching reading
and listening skills. To use these questions effectively, however, teachers
have to know types and levels of difficulty of those questions. In
Dung(1997), types of reading comprehension and listening comprehension
questions can be classified as follows:

17

(i) Classification of questions into categories on the basic of the structure:
- Yes/no questions
- “Or” questions (alternative questions)
- Who, what, where questions
- How-questions
- Why questions
- Multiple choices
- True/false
(ii) Classification of questions into categories on the basic of response
expected
 Questions that are answered by directly getting the information in the
text
 Questions that are answered by selecting information in the text
 Questions that are answered by indirect ideas in the tex.
 Questions that require reduction and assessment to answer
In fact, the level of difficulty of questions depends not only on the
complexity of questions’ structures but also on the content of responses
required. Thus, teachers should take these two elements into consideration to
give questions suitable to learner’s level.
 Eliciting questions
These are questions that give suggestion to make students contribute their
own ideas, their information, their available knowledge and basing on that the
learners can understand the lesson and practice using the language better.

1.3 Summary
This chapter has been concerned with the theoretical background for
questions and questioning techniques. The question background includes
question definition, question types including four different ways of classify

18

questions. The questioning technique background is made up of the aims of
questioning, criteria for effective questioning, and ways of exploiting
questioning techniques in English teaching.

19


CHAPTER 2 USING ELICITING QUESTIONS TO TEACH
ENGLISH TO 11th FORM PUPILS

2.1 Advantages of Using Eliciting questions in EnglishTeaching
 Through eliciting questions, pupils are actively involved in the
lesson, pupil’s talking time increases.
 Eliciting questions make full use of pupil’s available knowledge and
consolidate the lesson, as well as develop thinking skills, learning
strategies of pupils.
 Eliciting questions make the lesson more attractive and more
interesting and make pupils more motivated.
 Eliciting questions are also a mean to check up and to give
teachersnecessaryinformation such as: which parts pupils have already
understood, which parts they will get confused, which pupils understand
the lesson well, which pupils need extra help.

2.2 Some Ways of Exploiting Eliciting questions to Teach
English
2.2.1 Using Eliciting questions to Help Pupils Understand More
about the Lesson
This is the technique that teacher use short and easy questions to enable

pupils to find the answers to more difficult and complicated questions in the
text. This type of question is often staged from easy to difficult ones so that
they can gradually give pupils suggestions to a big problem.
For example:
Casey: Are you coming to the demo on Sunday?
Terry: What demo?
Casey: Don’t you ever read anything, Terry? Look at this leaflet.
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Kam wrote it, you know.
Terry: “Save Our Trees. Last week permission was given for the Kingman
Property Company to cut down the old trees at the end of Victoria Road. The
land is needed for new offices and flats. Those trees are nearly two hundred
years old. They were planted in the time of Napoleon. Unless we do
something, they will be cut down next week and two hundred years of history
will be destroyed. Letters have been written to the local council and a
petition has been organized. A demonstration will be held at the trees on
Saturday 20th at 9.30 a.m. Please come along and support us. Save our
trees.”
Are you going?
(Hotline, Pre-intermediate, Oxford University Press)
When teaching this text, in order to help pupils understand the underlined
sentence, the teacher can, in turns, asks the following questions:
 What are they going to do with those trees?
 How old are those trees? When were they planted?
 Will the trees be destroyed?
 Why does the author say two hundred years of history will be
destroyed?
 Will the trees definitely be destroyed?

 Is there any chance that those trees and the history can be saved?

This type of questions can also be used to help pupils understand the
whole text such as a funny story.
Example:
“A tourist visiting a pub was fascinated by a stuffed lion’s head mounted on
a mahogany plaque above a door behind the bar.
“Is there a story behind that magnificent trophy?” asked the tourist.

21


“That lion killed my wife”, replied the landlord grimly.
“Were you on Safari?”
“No”, said the landlord, “It fell on her head.”
(Sunflower. No 65, February 1999)
To help pupils understand this funny story, the following questions can be
asked in turns:
 Where is the stuffed lion’s head?
 How does it relate to the death of the landlord wife?
 Was she killed while they were in Safari?
 How was she killed?
 Should the landlord hang that stuffed lion’s head above a door now?
Why?

2.2.2 Using Eliciting questions to Check the Concept, the Meaning of
Words and Structures
In the stage of introducing new linguistic material, one important step
that should be done before the practice stage is checking how pupils
understand the linguistic materials already introduced. One of the techniques

to do this is using a series of questions around the meaning of that linguistic
material.

2.2.2.1 Checking the Meanings of New Words
Example 1: To check the meaning of “building”, the teacher may
use the following eliciting questions:
 Is it a big thing?
 Is a school a building?
 Is a hospital a building?
 Is a house/a tent a building?

22


 Who makes a building?
Example 2: For the word “supermarket”, eliciting questions may be:
 Is a supermarket a market?
 Is a supermarket a building?
 Is a supermarket a big market?
 Is Dong Xuan market a supermarket?
 Who do you pay at the supermarket?
 What can you buy there?

2.2.2.2 Checking the Meanings of Grammatical Structures
Example 1: “They’d had lunch when she got there.”
Eliciting questions used may be:
 Did she have lunch with them?
 Did she see them eat lunch?
Example 2: Distinguish “already” and “yet” in these sentence:
Have you had dinner already?(1)

Have you had dinner yet?

(2)

The teacher can ask the following questions:
 Did the person have dinner in situation (1)?
 Did the person have dinner in situation (2)?
 What could be the answer for question (1)?
 What could be the answer for question (2)?
 Why does the questioner ask such a question in situation (1)?
 Why does the questioner ask such a question in situation (2)?
Note: The implication of question (1) is “I’m surprised that you’ve already
had the dinner”, maybe, because it’s still early or the whole family haven’t
had dinner yet. Question (2) is a real question. The questioner wants to know
if the person has had dinner, and the answer can be yes or no.
23


2.2.2.3 Checking the Functional Concepts of Sentences
For example:

(In a dialogue at a party)

“I’ve left my coffee in the kitchen. ”
Teachers may use the following eliciting questions:
 Where was the speaker’s coffee?
 Where was the speaker now?
 Did the host want to know where his/her coffee was?
 Why did the speaker tell this to the host?
 What did the speaker want?

2.3 The Situation of Using Questioning Techniques at
High School in Vietnam
2.3.1 Teacher’s Using Questions by Feeling, without Clear Aims
Observing a teaching period, we can easily see that the teacher uses many
questions and in some cases, questioning is used as the only technique in
class. However, teachers are not always aware of their aims when using
questions. Thus, the advantages of questioning techniques are not thoroughly
exploited to serve for teaching purposes.

2.3.2 No Chance for Pupils to Practise Questions Communicatively
Questions in class are often considered to be a means of checking up. That
is the reason why the questioners are mainly the teachers. Pupils rarely have
chance to make questions communicatively in class. Their activeness and
creativeness are limited, as a result.
2.3.3 Pupil’s Uneven English Level
Generally, the English level of most 11th form pupils is not the same.
That is because many high school pupils did not study English when they

24


were at lower secondary schools and they often feel nervous to study with
their classmates. While many other pupils who have studied English for five
or more than five years are often more advanced than their classmates.

2.4 Findings
During my pedagogical practice time at Nam Đàn I high school, with the
help of teachers, I had chance to teach two classes in the 11 th form, they are
11B and 11Đ. In these classes, I used many eliciting questions to teach them.

After that, I carried out a survey with two questionnaires, one is for pupils in
these above classes and the other is for teachers in Nam Đàn I high school. I
have also received the help of my friends to carry out this survey
questionnaire to teachers in Kim Liên High School and Nguyễn Du High
School.
This is the result of the Survey Questionnaire 1, which was done by 100
pupils from the two classes: 11B and 11D.
Item

A

B

C

D

1

5%

52%

0%

43%

2

98%

2%

3

20%

70%

10%

0%

4

90%

10%

5

3%

38%

53%

6%

6

20%

0%

80%

7

100%

0%

8

100%

0%

9

29%

70%

No

1%

25

0%