Language Class Interaction: Implications on Learning Motivation

Teacher questioning as a teaching tool influences students' learning outcomes. As to what type of questions best influences student outcomes has been of interest in several studies on classroom discourse. In the same vein, this study was conducted to explore the level of teacher questions and its relation to student involvement and attitude toward instruction. This study used the qualitative and quantitative approaches to research. Classroom observations in social science classes in a private university, recording and transcribing of teacher questions, classification of the questions based on Bloom’s Taxonomy of cognitive domain, and statistical testing on the difference in means of the variables were done. Frequency, ranking, weighted mean, t-test, and F-test were the statistical tools used to facilitate the analysis and interpretation of data. Findings reveal that the typical teacher questions were of low cognitive level. Significant differences existed in levels of involvement and attitude of the students when they were grouped by the level of teacher questions. Students in classes of low-level questions had higher level of involvement and better attitudinal responses than the students in classes of high-level questions. The possible factors explored to explain the findings of the study led to the recommendation that teachers should more frequently use high-level questions to develop the critical thinking skills of the students.

Keywords: Questions, questioning, student involvement, discourse, student attitude, level of questions