T. R. BURSA ULUDAĞ UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING TEACHER QUESTIONS IN 6TH GRADE EFL CLASSES: AN EXPLORATORY ACTION RESEARCH IN ONLINE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS DURING THE COVID-19 M.A. THESIS ESRA ÇİL 0000-0002-3949-1316 BURSA-2022 T. C. BURSA ULUDAĞ ÜNİVERSİTESİ EĞİTİM BİLİMLERİ ENSTİTÜSÜ YABANCI DİLLER EĞİTİMİ ANA BİLİM DALI İNGİLİZ DİLİ EĞİTİMİ BİLİM DALI İNGİLİZCENİN YABANCI DİL OLARAK ÖĞRENİLDİĞİ 6. SINIFLARDA ÖĞRETMEN SORULARI: COVİD-19 DÖNEMİNDE ÇEVRİMİÇİ ÖĞRENME ORTAMLARINDA KEŞİF AMAÇLI BİR EYLEM ARAŞTIRMASI YÜKSEK LİSANS TEZİ ESRA ÇİL 0000-0002-3949-1316 Danışman Dr. Öğr. Üye. Pınar SALI BURSA-2022 BİLİMSEL ETİĞE UYGUNLUK Bu çalışmadaki tüm bilgilerin akademik ve etik kurallara uygun bir şekilde elde edildiğini beyan ederim. Esra Çil 08.08.2022 i TEZ YAZIM KILAVUZU’NA UYGUNLUK ONAYI “Teacher Questions in 6th Grade EFL Classes: An Exploratory Action Research in Online Learning Environments During the Covid-19” adlı Yüksek Lisans tezi, Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi Eğitim Bilimleri Enstitüsü tez yazım kurallarına uygun olarak hazırlanmıştır. Tezi Hazırlayan Danışman Esra ÇİL Dr. Öğr. Üye. Pınar SALI Yabancı Diller Eğitimi Ana Bilim Dalı Başkanı Prof. Dr. Ayşegül Amanda YEŞİLBURSA ii EĞİTİM BİLİMLERİ ENSTİTÜSÜ YÜKSEK LİSANS BENZERLİK YAZILIM RAPORU BURSA ULUDAĞ ÜNİVERSİTESİ EĞİTİM BİLİMLERİ ENSTİTÜSÜ YABANCI DİLLER EĞİTİMİ ANABİLİM DALI BAŞKANLIĞI’NA Tarih: 08/08/2022 Tez Başlığı / Konusu: İngilizcenin Yabancı Dil Olarak Öğrenildiği 6. Sınıflarda Öğretmen Soruları: Covid-19 Döneminde Çevrimiçi Öğrenme Ortamlarında Keşif Amaçlı Bir Eylem Araştırması Yukarıda başlığı gösterilen tez çalışmamın a) Kapak sayfası, b) Giriş, c) Ana bölümler ve d) Sonuç kısımlarından oluşan toplam 112 sayfalık kısmına ilişkin, 03.07.2022. tarihinde şahsım tarafından Turnitin adlı intihal (benzerlik) tespit programından aşağıda belirtilen filtrelemeler uygulanarak alınmış olan özgünlük raporuna göre, tezimin benzerlik oranı %5 bulunmuştur. Uygulanan filtrelemeler: 1- Kaynakça hariç 2- Alıntılar hariç/dahil 3- 5 kelimeden daha az örtüşme içeren metin kısımları hariç Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi Eğitim Bilimleri Enstitüsü Tez Çalışması Özgünlük Raporu Alınması ve Kullanılması Uygulama Esasları’nı inceledim ve bu Uygulama Esasları’nda belirtilen azami benzerlik oranlarına göre tez çalışmamın herhangi bir intihal (benzerlik) içermediğini; aksinin tespit edileceği muhtemel durumda doğabilecek her türlü hukuki sorumluluğu kabul ettiğimi ve yukarıda vermiş olduğum bilgilerin doğru olduğunu beyan ederim. Gereğini saygılarımla arz ederim. 08.08.2022 Adı Soyadı: Esra Çil Öğrenci No: 801993012 Anabilim Dalı: Yabancı Diller Eğitimi Ana Bilim Dalı Programı: İngiliz Dili Eğitimi Statüsü: Yüksek Lisans Danışman Dr. Öğr. Üye. Pınar SALI 08.08.2022 iii T.C. BURSA ULUDAĞ ÜNİVERSİTESİ EĞİTİM BİLİMLER ENSTİTÜSÜ MÜDÜRLÜĞÜNE Yabancı Diller Eğitimi Anabilim Dalı’nda 801993012 numaralı Esra Çil’in hazırladığı “Teacher Questions in 6th Grade EFL Classes: An Exploratory Action Research in Online Learning Environments During the Covid-19” konulu Yüksek Lisans ile ilgili tez savunma sınavı, 22/07/2022 günü 11:00-12:00 saatleri arasında yapılmış, sorulan sorulara alınan cevaplar sonunda adayın tezinin başarılı olduğuna oybirliği ile karar verilmiştir. Üye ( Tez Danışmanı ve Sınav Komisyonu Başkanı) Dr. Öğr. Üye. Pınar SALI Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi Üye Üye Prof. Dr. A. Amanda YEŞİLBURSA Dr. Öğr. Üye. Işıl YALÇIN Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi Eskişehir Osmangazi Üniversitesi 22/07/2022 iv ABSTRACT Name and Surname Esra Çil University Bursa Uludağ University Institution Institute of Educational Sciences Field Foreign Language Education Branch English Language Education Degree Awarded Master Page Number xvii+162 Degree Date .…/…./2022 Supervisor Assist. Prof. Dr. Pınar SALI TEACHER QUESTIONS IN 6TH GRADE EFL CLASSES: AN EXPLORATORY ACTION RESEARCH IN ONLINE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS DURING THE COVID-19 Teacher questions are crucial elements of teacher talk that provide a lot of detail about what happens in the lessons regarding classroom interaction. Different aspects of teacher questions have been frequently explored by researchers so far. However, teacher-researchers have not yet given sufficient attention to this topic and explored their questions by carrying out action research studies. Moreover, teacher questions have not been researched extensively in online classroom settings. In order to both fill out this gap in the literature and to develop an awareness of my questioning practices, I conducted this qualitative action study as a teacher- researcher. I collected data from the online lessons I had with two 6th grade EFL classes in a public secondary school setting. The data collection process took place for seven weeks, during which I recorded online lessons for six weeks and administered an open-ended questionnaire to my students in the final week. Then, I analysed data by identifying the frequency, types, and functions of the English questions I asked in 50 online lessons. My analysis revealed that I asked 1588 questions in total. Of these questions, I used epistemic questions more than echoic questions and display questions more than referential questions. Besides, my questions served mostly procedural function, followed by convergent function, and divergent function. The analysis also revealed that I hardly made use of questions enhancing the critical thinking skills of my students. Moreover, my students expressed in the questionnaire that they were content with my questions in general. However, they preferred referential questions to display v questions. Consequently, this study was of great importance for me to reflect on certain aspects of my questions and take necessary actions to improve these aspects. Moreover, this study may inspire other teachers to take a step to develop consciousness of their questions as well by means of carrying out similar studies. Keywords: action research, classroom interaction, English as a foreign language, online learning, reflective teaching, teacher questions vi ÖZET Yazar Adı ve Soyadı Esra Çil Üniversite Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi Enstitü Eğitim Bilimleri Enstitüsü Ana Bilim Dalı Yabancı Diller Eğitimi Bilim Dalı İngiliz Dili Eğitimi Tezin Niteliği Yüksek Lisans Sayfa Sayısı xvii+162 Mezuniyet Tarihi .../…/2022 Danışman Dr. Öğr. Üye. Pınar SALI İNGİLİZCENİN YABANCI DİL OLARAK ÖĞRENİLDİĞİ 6. SINIFLARDA ÖĞRETMEN SORULARI: COVİD-19 DÖNEMİNDE ÇEVRİMİÇİ ÖĞRENME ORTAMLARINDA KEŞİF AMAÇLI BİR EYLEM ARAŞTIRMASI Öğretmen soruları, sınıf içi etkileşim bağlamında derslerde neler olduğu hakkında birçok detay veren öğretmen konuşmasının önemli unsurlarıdır. Şu ana kadar öğretmen sorularının farklı boyutları araştırmacılardan tarafından sıklıkla incelenmiştir. Ancak, öğretmen-araştırmacılar bu konuya henüz yeterince ilgi göstermemiştir ve kendi sorularını eylem araştırmaları yaparak incelememişlerdir. Ayrıca, öğretmen soruları çevrimiçi sınıf ortamlarında kapsamlı bir şekilde araştırılmamıştır. Bir öğretmen-araştırmacı olarak bu nitel eylem araştırmasını hem literatürdeki bu boşluğu doldurmak hem de kendi soru sorma uygulamalarım hakkında bir farkındalık geliştirmek için yaptım. Bir devlet ortaokulunda İngilizcenin yabancı dil olarak öğretildiği iki adet 6. sınıf ile Covid-19 pandemi döneminde yaptığım çevrimiçi derslerden veri topladım. 6 hafta boyunca çevrimiçi dersleri kaydettiğim ve son hafta öğrencilere açık uçlu bir anket uygulattığım veri toplama süreci 7 hafta sürdü. Daha sonra, 50 çevrimiçi derste sorduğum İngilizce soruların miktarını, türlerini ve işlevlerini ayırt ederek veriyi analiz ettim. Analizim sonucunda toplamda 1588 adet soru sorduğum ortaya çıktı. Bu sorular arasında bilişsel soruları yansıma sorularından daha fazla, öğrencilerden bilgi isteyen soruları öğrencilerin fikirlerini soran sorulardan daha fazla kullandım. Ayrıca, sorularım işlevi çoğunlukla sınıf yönetimini sağlamaya, ardından konuyu pekiştirmeye ve öğrencilerimi farklı sevk etmeye yönelikti. Analiz aynı zamanda öğrencilerimin eleştirel düşünce becerilerini geliştirmeye yönelik soruları nadiren kullandığımı ortaya çıkardı. Bunun yanında, öğrencilerim ankette sorularımdan genel olarak memnun olduklarını belirttiler. Fakat onlardan bilgi vii istediğim soruları onların fikirlerini sorduğum sorulara tercih ettiler. Sonuç olarak, bu çalışma sorularımın belirli boyutları üzerinde düşünmek ve bu boyutları geliştirmek için gerekli eylemleri almam için büyük önem taşıdı. Hem de bu çalışma benzer çalışma yürüterek diğer öğretmenlerin de soruları hakkında bilinçlenmeleri yolunda adım atmaları için onlara ilham verebilir. Anahtar kelimeler: çevrimiçi öğrenme, eylem araştırması, İngilizceyi yabancı dil olarak öğrenme, öğretmen soruları, sınıf içi etkileşim, yansıtıcı öğretim viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express that this journey was a hard and long one, more than I ever imagined to be. However, I could make it to the end with the constant help, support, and encouragement of my dear supervisor Assist. Prof. Dr. Pınar SALI. She showed me that there was a light at the end of the tunnel in the instances that I drifted away to hopelessness. Moreover, the feedback she provided all throughout the process made me learn so much and improve myself academically. She was also always very kind, understanding, and optimistic which eased this stressful process. Then, I would like to extend my gratitude to Assist. Prof. Dr. Işıl YALÇIN and Prof. Dr. A. Amanda YEŞİLBURSA. Their participation as jury members of the defense of this thesis and their valuable feedback and suggestions they provided for this study and future studies was of great importance for me. I would also like to thank all the people who made it possible for me to carry out this research. To start with, my dear students who were the participants of this study, their parents, my colleagues, and my principals were all helpful and cooperative throughout the data collection process. Their support and contribution to my study meant so much to me. Besides, I would like to express my gratitude to my dearest friends who constantly encouraged, supported, and assisted me during this journey in many ways. They helped me to keep going this far and believe in myself no matter what. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family members, especially my parents. They were always patient and supportive enough to bear with me at all times during my M.A. journey. Their support was always so precious to me without which it would be harder for me to deal with the problems I faced. ix CONTENTS BİLİMSEL ETİĞE UYGUNLUK……………………………………………………………... i TEZ YAZIM KILAVUZU’NA UYGUNLUK ONAYI………………………………………..ii BENZERLİK YAZILIM RAPORU…………………………………………………………...iii JÜRİ ONAY SAYFASI………………………………..……………………………………...iv ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................. iv ÖZET ........................................................................................................................................ vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................... ix List of Tables ............................................................................................................................ xv List of Figures ......................................................................................................................... xvi List of Abbreviations .............................................................................................................. xvii CHAPTER 1 ............................................................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Background to the Study ................................................................................................. 1 1.1.1. Classroom Interaction and Teacher Questions.......................................................... 1 1.1.2. Online Learning and Emergency Remote Teaching ................................................. 2 1.2. Purpose of the Study ........................................................................................................ 3 1.3. Research Questions .......................................................................................................... 6 1.4. Significance of the Study ................................................................................................. 6 1.5. Definitions of the Terms .................................................................................................. 7 1.6. Limitations of the Study .................................................................................................. 8 1.7. Assumptions .................................................................................................................... 9 1.8. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 10 CHAPTER 2 ............................................................................................................................. 11 LITERATURE REVIEW ......................................................................................................... 11 2.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 11 2.2. Action Research ............................................................................................................. 11 x 2.3. Classroom Interaction .................................................................................................... 14 2.3.1. Sociocultural Theory. .............................................................................................. 15 2.3.2. Classroom Interaction in Online Learning Environments ...................................... 16 2.4. Teacher Talk .................................................................................................................. 17 2.5. Teacher Questions ......................................................................................................... 18 2.5.1. Types of Teacher Questions .................................................................................... 20 2.5.2. Functions of Teacher Questions .............................................................................. 24 2.5.3. Frameworks of Question Types. ............................................................................. 28 2.5.4. Critical Thinking Skills and Teacher Questions ..................................................... 34 2.6. Studies on Teacher Questions ........................................................................................ 36 2.6.1. Action Research on Teacher Questions. ................................................................. 37 2.6.2. Frequency, Type and Function of Teacher Questions ............................................ 39 2.6.2.1. Frequency and Types of Teacher Questions .................................................... 39 2.6.2.2. Functions of Teacher Questions. ...................................................................... 45 2.6.3. Students’ Opinions of Teacher Questions ............................................................... 47 2.6.4. Teacher Questions in Online Learning Environments. ........................................... 50 2.7. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 51 CHAPTER 3 ............................................................................................................................. 52 METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................... 52 3.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 52 3.2. Aim of the Study and Research Questions .................................................................... 52 3.3. Design ............................................................................................................................ 52 3.3.1. Action Research Cycle of the Study ....................................................................... 54 3.4. Setting ............................................................................................................................ 56 3.5. Participants .................................................................................................................... 56 3.6. Data Collection Instruments .......................................................................................... 58 3.6.1. Lesson Recordings .................................................................................................. 58 xi 3.6.2. Student Questionnaires ........................................................................................... 59 3.7. Data Collection Process ................................................................................................. 61 3.8. Data Analysis ................................................................................................................. 62 3.9. Reliability and Validity Issues ....................................................................................... 67 3.10. The Role of the Researcher.......................................................................................... 68 3.11. Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 69 CHAPTER 4 ............................................................................................................................. 70 FINDINGS ............................................................................................................................... 70 4.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 70 4.2. What Is the Frequency of Each Question I Ask in 6th Grade EFL Classes?................. 70 4.3. What Are the Types of the Questions I Ask in 6th Grade EFL Classes? ....................... 71 4.3.1. Echoic Questions. ................................................................................................... 74 4.3.1.1. Clarification Requests and Confirmation Checks ............................................ 74 4.3.1.2. Comprehension Checks .................................................................................... 76 4.3.2. Epistemic Questions. ............................................................................................... 77 4.3.2.1. Display Questions ............................................................................................ 77 4.3.2.2. Lower Referential Questions ............................................................................ 79 4.3.2.3. Requests ........................................................................................................... 81 4.4. What Is the Frequency of the Questions I Ask in 6th Grade EFL Classes That Enhance the Critical Thinking Skills of My Students? ....................................................................... 82 4.4.1. Higher Referential Questions .................................................................................. 82 4.5. What Are the Functions of the Questions I Ask in 6th Grade EFL Classes? ................. 85 4.6. What Are My Students’ Views of the Questions I Ask in 6th Grade EFL Classes? ...... 89 4.6.1. Students’ Views About the Easiness and Difficulty of My Questions ................... 89 4.6.2. Students’ Reasons for the Difficulty of My Questions ........................................... 91 4.6.3. Students’ Reasons for the Easiness of My Questions. ............................................ 92 4.6.4. Students’ Preferences of My Questions. ................................................................. 93 xii 4.6.5. Students’ Reasons for Preferring Some of My Questions Less .............................. 95 4.6.6. Students’ Reasons for Preferring Some of My Questions More ............................. 95 4.6.7. Students’ Views About Whether My Questions Are Easily Understood ............... 96 4.6.8. Students’ Views About Whether My Questions Are Easily Answered .................. 98 4.6.9. Students’ Suggestions About My Questions ......................................................... 100 4.7. Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 100 CHAPTER 5 ........................................................................................................................... 101 DISCUSSION ........................................................................................................................ 101 5.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 101 5.2. Frequency, Types and Functions of Teacher Questions .............................................. 101 5.3. Student Questionnaire .................................................................................................. 108 5.4. Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 111 CHAPTER 6 ........................................................................................................................... 112 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 112 6.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 112 6.2. Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 112 6.3. Pedagogical Implications ............................................................................................. 113 6.4. Further Research .......................................................................................................... 116 References .............................................................................................................................. 117 Appendices ............................................................................................................................. 128 Appendix 1: Turkish Version of the Student Questionnaire: “Students’ Views of the Teacher Questions” .......................................................................................................................... 128 Appendix 2: English Version of the Student Questionnaire: “Students’ Views of the Teacher Questions” .......................................................................................................................... 131 Appendix 3: Parental Consent Form .................................................................................. 134 Appendix 4: Turkish Version Expert Opinion Form for the Student Questionnaire .......... 135 Appendix 5: English Version Expert Opinion Form for the Student Questionnaire .......... 144 Appendix 6: Permission of the Ethics Committee .............................................................. 153 xiii Appendix 7: Permission of Directorate of National Education of İstanbul ........................ 154 Appendix 8: Jefferson’s Transcription Convention (2004) ................................................ 157 Appendix 9: Sample Transcription Extract of a Class A’s Lesson .................................... 158 Appendix 10: Sample Transcription Extract of a Class B’s Lesson ................................... 160 CURRICULUM VITAE ........................................................................................................ 162 xiv List of Tables Table Page 1. Adaptation of S. Thompson’s (1998) classification of functions of questions. ............................................... 26 2. Myhill et al.’s (2005, p. 73) categorization of functions of questions ............................................................. 27 3. Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy of questions ......................................................................................................... 29 4. Kearsley’s (1976) framework of teacher questions. ....................................................................................... 29 5. Long and Sato’s (1983) framework of teacher questions ............................................................................... 30 6. Wilen’s (1991) classification of questions ..................................................................................................... 31 7. Gabrielatos’ (1997) classification of questions .............................................................................................. 31 8. Todd’s (1997) classification of questions ...................................................................................................... 32 9. Adaptation of Long and Sato’s (1983) and Todd’s (1997) question types ...................................................... 33 10. Richards and Lockhart’s (1996) functions of teacher questions ................................................................... 33 11. The framework I used for the analysis of my questions ............................................................................... 34 12. Participant information ................................................................................................................................ 56 13. The framework I used for the analysis of my questions ............................................................................... 64 14. The frequency of my questions .................................................................................................................... 70 15. The framework I used for the analysis of my questions ............................................................................... 72 16. The frequency of the types of my questions in total ..................................................................................... 73 17. Examples of echoic questions in my lessons ................................................................................................ 77 18. Examples of epistemic questions in my lessons ........................................................................................... 84 19. The frequency of the functions of my questions in total ............................................................................... 86 20. The frequencies of the types and functions of my questions in each lesson .................................................. 87 21. My questions presented in the student questionnaire .................................................................................... 89 22. My students’ views about the easiness and difficulty of my questions ......................................................... 91 23. The frequency of my students’ answers in terms of their preferences ........................................................... 93 24. The order of preference and non-preference of my questions ....................................................................... 94 25. The categorization of answers regarding why my questions were easily understood .................................... 96 26. Different types of answers my students gave regarding why my questions were easily understood .............. 97 27. The categorization of answers regarding why my questions were easily answered ....................................... 98 28. Different types of answers my students gave regarding why my questions were easily answered ................. 99 xv List of Figures Figure Page 1. Mcniff’s (2002) cycle of action research ..................................................................................................... 12 2. Smith’s (2015, p. 40) cycle of action and exploratory action research ............................................................ 13 3. Wallace’s (1998, p.14) model of professional development ........................................................................... 14 4. Freed’s (1994, p. 626) taxonomy of functions of questions ............................................................................ 27 5. Action research cycle of the study ................................................................................................................. 55 xvi List of Abbreviations 4Cs: Collaboration, Communication, Creativity and Critical Thinking AR: Action Research CI: Classroom Interaction CT: Critical Thinking EBA: Eğitim Bilişim Ağı, Educational Informatics Network EFL: English as a Foreign Language ELT: English Language Teaching ESL: English as a Second Language IRF: Initiation, Response, Feedback LMS: Learning Management System MoNE: Ministry of National Education SETT: Self-Evaluation of Teacher Talk xvii 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In this chapter, I will provide information related to the fundamental aspects that constitute the backbone of my thesis study. These aspects are comprised the background, purpose, research questions, significance, limitations, and assumptions regarding this study. I will mention each of them in a single subchapter and then conclude my remarks hereafter. 1.1. Background to the Study 1.1.1. Classroom Interaction and Teacher Questions: Classroom interaction is a topic of research that has gained wide attention from researchers and scholars in the field of foreign language education. It is referred to as any kind of interaction that occurs between the teachers and the learners for the sake of learning to be accomplished (Farrell, 2009). Without classroom interaction, both teaching and learning could never be complete, since this process is not all about transferring knowledge to learners and their process of receiving it (İçbay, 2008). As Walsh (2006) states, there are multiple contexts that are formed throughout the events and conversations taking place in the classrooms and the context in which knowledge transfer occurs is just one of the many contexts. This implies that classroom is a multi-dimensional place and all kinds of interaction of it gives a lot of detail about these dimensions. Therefore, classroom interaction is a significant concept that enlightens teachers, researchers, and scholars about multiple aspects of learning. The dimensions of classroom interaction include setting up participation, teacher talk, teacher questions, use of L1, feedback, and interaction patterns. Of these dimensions, teacher questions have a significant role in understanding how teachers set the academic task and social participation structure. Setting the academic task refers to the process of giving instructions and transferring knowledge, in other words, making sure that the teacher directed the lesson. Thus, when teachers ask questions to lead the students to accomplish a certain activity, task, or game, to get answers from them, or to check the students’ knowledge about the content, their questions serve the role to set the academic task. On the other hand, the other function of the teacher questions, which is setting the social participation structure, refers to the initiation of an interaction pattern by the teacher to make the interaction happen between the teacher and the student or the students themselves. Thus, with the help of such questions, teachers are able to create a socially active classroom environment. Teacher questions have been more extensively researched than any other aspect of classroom interaction due to their distinguishing features and the fact that they make up a great deal of teacher talk (Tsui, Marton, Mok & Ng, 2004). They have been extensively researched 2 not only by scholars and researchers in general but also by teacher-researchers (X. Meng & Wang, 2011; Özcan, 2010; Öztürk, 2016). These studies have been carried out either in order to identify the frequency and the type of the questions that have been asked by the teachers in the study (Altun, 2010; Karakuş, 2018), to find out the effectiveness of those questions in developing a certain language skill of the students (Wright, 2016; C. C. R. Yang; 2010) or find out the opinions of the students regarding these questions (Kemaloğlu-Er, 2021; Özcan, 2010). Regarding the fact that these studies follow a process the researchers of which explore their own questions as practitioners in the field, they enable these teacher-researchers to develop self- awareness and become more self-reflective towards their teaching practices. Moreover, they encourage teachers to implement relevant adaptations regarding their present circumstances (Kraft, 2002). Such adaptations can be teachers’ asking a variety of question types rather than using a single type predominantly or asking questions that are more appropriate for their students’ L2 levels, and interests. Especially when classroom questions are adapted to be in correlation with students’ interests, the students are more likely to be willing to answer them (Wilen, 1987). In doing so, both teachers and students are likely to benefit more in the sense that better questioning practices lead to more efficient classroom interaction and better language performances of students. For instance, more effective questioning techniques may lead to less teacher-directed and more student-directed interaction patterns (Al-Zahrani & Al-Bargi, 2017). Moreover, learners’ language skills and language output may increase (Kemaloğlu-Er, 2021). On a general note, teacher-researchers go through these processes when they conduct action research studies by collecting data in their classrooms. In such studies, they act as the practitioner and the agent of their research context (Dikilitaş & Griffiths, 2017; McNiff, 2002). They aim to find a solution to a problem they encounter in their teaching contexts and take action towards solving it as a result of this research. When they collect and analyse their own data, they become even more self-aware and self-reflective towards their teaching processes. It is because their main goals in conducting the action research are to develop a better insight into their teaching circumstances and change what they consider as problematic in the classroom for the better. These circumstances can be as varied as their teaching styles, their language use, their students’ language skills, and performance levels. In taking the initiative to carry out action research, teachers take a step to improve these important aspects of their classroom. 1.1.2. Online Learning and Emergency Remote Teaching: Online learning is a form of learning that offers educators a variety chances to conduct their lessons outside the classroom context with the help of technological tools. It can take place in many types such as synchronous, asynchronous, and blended learning (Perveen, 2016). These types of learning 3 have been used since the 1990s (Hockly, 2015) and have started to advance a decade later with the developments of new web tools. In synchronous learning, teachers and students often make use of videoconferencing tools such as Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams to have lessons simultaneously. In asynchronous learning, learning management systems (LMS) such as Moodle and Blackboard are used, and videos or lessons materials of other formats are provided to the learners for them to follow at their leisure. Blended or hybrid learning refers to the use of both synchronous and asynchronous learning types. With the emergence of Covid-19 pandemic, the educational institutions, be it schools of all grades, universities, and private language courses were obligated to switch their learning environments from face-to-face to online settings (Ertem, 2021). This obligation was due to the severity of the risk of the illness spreading among people and causing a great number of deaths. Thus, with such a huge risk at hand, governments took necessary measures to implement lockdowns and restrictions on every aspect of life. These obligatory processes affected the educational systems all over the world as well. The Ministries of National Education and Higher Education Councils immediately took an action plan to make use of online learning environments as of spring term of 2019-2020 educational year. Since the pandemic did not lose its severity, those immediate action plans were implemented only with slight improvements throughout 2020-2021 educational year as well. Thus, this recent compulsory phase of online learning was named as emergency remote teaching (Bozkurt & Sharma, 2020). As for what Turkish Ministry of National Education (MoNE) did during these processes, it implemented a hybrid learning model ever since the Covid-19 started. The students of all grades and school types were able to follow the curriculum via the LMS that MoNE developed before the pandemic called EBA (Educational Informatics Network). In EBA, students could reach various materials and do activities related to the lessons. They could also interact with their classmates and teachers. MoNE also prepared recorded lessons for the students and streamed them on multiple national television channels set up for each school grades; elementary, secondary, and high school. Thus, these platforms were forms of asynchronous learning. In addition to these, teachers had lessons through the videoconferencing platform Zoom, which was the form of synchronous learning where communication between teachers and students was more easily achieved. 1.2. Purpose of the Study Teacher questions give plenty of clues in identifying certain aspects of classroom interaction such as the frequency, type, and functions of questions, the patterns of interaction, feedback, and wait time. The clues unearthed during the identification of teacher questions in 4 foreign language classrooms can enrich the learning environments. Since the majority of L2 input is dependent upon teacher talk in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms compared to English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms, teacher questions are huge sources of input as well (Choudhury, 2005). They assist the learners to produce L2 output as well when they attempt to answer the questions. Moreover, the chance to be exposed to L2 input increases when learners hear each other’s answers. In addition to this, since question-answer routines create a pattern of interaction, these routines help learners to engage with the language by communicating with their interlocutors. Considering the fact that there are fewer out-of- class opportunities to practice L2 in EFL settings compared to ESL settings, the interaction patterns created with the help of teacher questions help EFL learners to practice language in their classrooms. Furthermore, when teachers create spaces for learners to initiate these patterns by encouraging them to ask questions, learners have the chance to practice language on a different level since they would be the ones to take control of the conversation. Therefore, with the help of teacher questions, the interaction between participants of the class as well as their chance to be exposed to input and produce output may increase. Besides, by using the question types that are suitable for the learners’ L2 levels and interests’, their answers may be more versatile, their higher-order thinking skills and language skills, in general, may be developed. For that to happen, teachers need to be aware of their questioning techniques. Without the realization of the impact their questions have on these dimensions of their classroom, teachers would direct questions to students blindly or in an automatized fashion. Thus, teachers definitely need to be cognizant of their questioning techniques and the effects they have on the students’ language learning progress (Gall, 1970; Riegle, 1976; Tsui et al., 2004). In the light of this conscience, I, as a teacher-researcher, conducted this action research study. My motivation in conducting this research were for several reasons. Initially, I took a course during my M.A. studies called “Classroom Interaction in Foreign Language Teaching” which aimed to motivate teacher-researchers like me to have an exploration of how we create interaction patterns in our classrooms (Yeşilbursa, 2017, p. 21). As a part of this course, I carried out a small-scale research study in which I explored several aspects of classroom interaction that occurred in the online lessons I had with a 5th grade class of mine at the onset of the Covid- 19 pandemic. Out of these aspects, teacher questions were the ones that caught my attention the most. The reason was that having collected data from my own classes in these studies, I came to the realization that I was neither cognizant of my questions themselves nor the fact that I should actually take heed of them. Thus, I realized that I should be more cognizant of to what 5 extent I ask questions and the types and functions of my questions, along with my students’ views of them. Because in doing so, I can ask more appropriate questions in terms of the content I teach and my students’ level and interest. Another reason why I chose to conduct this study is that having searched the literature, I noticed the scarcity in the number of action research studies conducted to explore teacher questions. This scarcity means that there is a gap in the literature of classroom research in terms of action research carried out not by researchers exploring other teachers’ classrooms but teachers’ exploring their own classrooms in order to take an action towards a problem. Teacher- researchers in the field have explored other aspects of classroom interaction by collecting data from their classrooms (Leblebiciler, 2020; Moghaddam, 2018), but this aspect of classroom interaction, which is teacher questions, has not been explored as frequently, so, it is yet to be explored by the teacher-researchers in the field. Teachers play the leading role in research settings where the events of classroom are looked into. They are the agents who have the chance to access almost all the details in terms of data and gain valuable insights as insiders. However, when researchers are the outsiders of the classroom settings, they can only observe without obtaining these privileges that teacher- researchers would have. To be more specific, when we consider research exploring teacher questions, data analysis and interpretation of outside researchers and inside teachers would distinguish from each other. That is because the teachers would know the best of their intentions of asking questions and the purposes they serve, as a matter of fact, they would recognize whether their utterances in the teacher talk are meant as questions or not. This information is so precious and indispensable to analyse certain aspects of teacher questions, such as the frequency, types, and functions. In my case, having realized the scarcity of teacher research exploring teacher questions and the fact that I was not sufficiently informed of the questions I ask in my classes and, I set in my mind to explore them in this study. With this aim, I identified the frequency, types and functions of questions I asked in two of my 6th grade-classes. I also identified the frequency of critical thinking questions. Moreover, I explored the opinions and preferences of my students about my questions. Regarding the gains that I estimate to have in my classes, this action research study would enrich my own teaching context by making me aware of my questioning practices and take action towards improving them. The improvement of the way I make use of questions in my classes would also enrich the learning context of my students since I would ask questions more to my students’ liking and suitable for their level. With these contributions in 6 mind, as a teacher-researcher, I plan to find answers to the research questions that I will present in the next subchapter. 1.3. Research Questions These are the research questions I look for the answers to in this study: 1. What is the frequency of each question I ask in 6th grade EFL classes? 2. What are the types of the questions I ask in 6th grade EFL classes? 3. What are the functions of the questions I ask in 6th grade EFL classes? 4. What is the frequency of the questions I ask in 6th grade EFL classes that enhance the critical thinking skills of my students? 5. What are my students’ views of the questions I ask in 6th grade EFL classes? 1.4. Significance of the Study Considering the fact that there is a gap in the literature of action research studies conducted in foreign language learning settings to explore teacher questions, filling this gap would result in many gains. First of all, the exploration of frequency, types, and functions of teacher questions would inform teachers about the terminology to classify their questions. Richards and Lockhart (1996) claim that teachers are unaware of their teaching practices, and one these practices embodies their questions. Teacher are not only unaware of how they use their questions regarding whether they predominantly ask in L1 or L2, how much they wait, or whether they give feedback, but they are also unaware to what extent they ask questions, the types, and functions of them. This unawareness causes them to overlook the impact their questions may have in their classrooms. Their students may not understand their questions, lack the language skills to reply to them, or simply not be interested in the content of these questions. Because the more interested they are, the more they are likely to respond (Wiley, 1987). Moreover, teachers may unconsciously direct certain types or questions to a group of students who do not benefit from these questions. More specifically, teachers may keep asking referential and open questions to lower-level learners which would decrease their willingness to participate. On the contrary, they may ask display and closed questions to higher-level learners which the learners may find boring. In addition, they may keep asking lower-level questions to higher-level learners and deprive them of the chance to increase their critical thinking skills. Therefore, the recognition of their questioning practices would lead the teachers to change them for the better. Teachers tend to alienate themselves from the academic field due to reasons such as they do not have sufficient knowledge about research processes, or they have too much workload to spend extra time for research. Studies as this particular one would encourage more 7 teachers to be researchers and eventually involve them in the academic field. Subsequently, this would result in teacher-researchers conducting action research studies to explore their teaching environments. In doing so, they would most likely unearth the gains they would have from these studies. Such gains may be that they develop awareness towards identifying and improving their questioning techniques and their students participate more in the lessons. This awareness eventually may motivate them to strive for improvements in the problematic issues in their classrooms. For instance, the students may not answer the questions they ask, their willingness to participate may be very low, or they may give short answers to the questions with a limited variety. Issues such as these could urge teachers to explore what is causing them and plan necessary actions to deal with them. Moreover, since teachers are not the only actors or actresses in the classroom, there are multiple gains that students may have out of the result of these studies, too. When teachers become self-aware of their questioning techniques, they are inclined to ask more appropriate questions for the students’ levels and ages and the content of the lesson. In fact, these factors should be taken into serious consideration while teachers plan their questions (Morgan & Saxton, 2006). This change for the better is likely to increase the efficiency students would have from the lessons, which may eventually boost their performance and participation in the lessons. As for my case, I strongly believe that the exploration of my questioning practices by delving into multiple aspects of them would increase my awareness of the questioning techniques I use in my classes. This awareness would result in the improvement of the quality of my questions in terms of their appropriateness of my learning context, such as my students’ age, L2 levels, and interests regarding the content. Moreover, learning the opinions and preferences of my students regarding the questions I ask them would help me to gain more insights into these questions. Consequently, I would take a more critical stance towards my questions and make prior planning regarding them more often and more consciously. Thus, I decided to conduct this study in light of these gains. 1.5. Definitions of the Terms In this part, I will provide brief explanations of key terms recurring in the following parts of this study. Action Research: It is referred to as a type of research the main participant of which has an active role in the research context where he or she collects data. The main goal for carrying out this kind of research is to address a problem that is faced in classroom settings either in order to come up with a solution or to have a better understanding of it (Dikilitaş & Griffiths, 2017). 8 Classroom Interaction: This concept refers to all types of discourse that occur for the sake of learning within the context of the classroom between the participants of it (Tsui, 2008). It has several features playing key roles in ensuring it such as interaction patterns, teacher talk, and classroom management. Critical Thinking Skills: Also referred to as the higher-order thinking skills, they comprise learners’ ability to make analysis, evaluation, reflection, and synthesis of either the abstract ideas or the material provided to them (Bloom, 1956). This set of skills enables learners to think outside of the box and learn different ways to learn different ways to ask and answer questions and participate in the classroom activities. Self-Reflective Teaching: This concept is defined as teachers’ taking a critical stance by reflecting upon their teaching circumstances as a means of their professional development (Richards & Lockhart, 1996). This type of teaching is also associated with action research and is applied by teachers in order to bring out a change to a problematic issue they face in their classrooms. Teacher Questions: Comprising a part of teacher talk, they are the questions directed to students for instructional purposes within the classroom context. They have a variety of classification of types, according to their grammatical form, the answer variety or the purposes they serve. 1.6. Limitations of the Study Due to the fact that this is an action study with the participant who also acts the role of the researcher, myself, and collecting data solely from my own research context, I can list a few limitations. One of them was the variety of data collection instruments that I made use of. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it was challenging to take the necessary permissions from the MoNE to collect data. It was mainly due to the requirements that MoNE specified for the researchers to meet in order to conduct research studies in its’ institutions. The pandemic brought along lockdowns and curfews even within the periods where education continued, which thus made it difficult to meet the research standards of MoNE. The challenging nature of being granted of necessary permits by MoNE affected the variety of the data collection instruments I used and the time period in which I collected data. Thus, the data collection process could include only a couple of instruments, which were the lesson recordings and student questionnaires. Provided I had the permit and sufficient time, I could have used another data collection technique by interviewing the volunteer students of mine, which would enrich my data and help me triangulate them to increase the reliability of my study. 9 The other limitation was the sample, which I selected by convenience sampling and consisted of 65 students in these two classes. Although I had other classes that I taught in the school I worked, the number of lessons I had with them was limited. This would have affected the quality of my data since the smaller number of lessons meant the less frequent and variant questions I would ask in the lessons with other classes. That was why I could only choose two classes that were convenient to the aim of my research study. Another limitation was the overall quality of my qualitative data, the lesson recordings. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, we had 40-minute face-to-face lessons in our physical school environment. However, during the pandemic, the duration of online lessons was decreased to 30 minutes. Moreover, during these 30 minutes, I could not spend all the time for sole teaching purposes. It was because sometimes we had connection problems and we had to spend time on managerial issues in lessons that normally we would have dealt with face-to-face in break time. Therefore, this affected the overall quality of data collected from these lessons. 1.7. Assumptions Along with the limitations of this research, some assumptions regarding my presuppositions as the researcher towards what may develop during and after the research process can be listed. Initially, I assume that I am not fully acquainted with the questioning practices I apply in my classes. Furthermore, though this does not cover my research questions, I suppose the L2 teachers, in general, are unaware of their questioning practices as well, which can be found out from the literature review to be reported afterwards. Moreover, this state of unconsciousness of L2 teachers concerning their own questions presumably covers the specific types and functions of these questions as well. Additionally, I suppose that L2 teachers, including me, do not know whether we direct questions provoking higher-order thinking skills sufficiently and eventually, whether we give sufficient importance to this matter. Furthermore, it is my assumption that I do not know the perceptions my students hold about my questions concerning whether they favour my questioning techniques, which question types they prefer more, and which of them can be easily answered by them. Since their perceptions towards questions affect their willingness to participate in classroom activities, their language skills, and their attitude towards English as well, I may not be aware of the effects my questions could have on my students. As for what may happen upon completing this study, I assume that I will be more cognizant of the nature of my questions and my students’ thoughts on them. In addition, I will develop a conscience towards the significance of pre-planning my questions and knowing the effect they may have on my students. This realization of mine is likely to inspire me to take 10 action to make changes related to my questioning practices. Besides, on a larger scale, L2 teachers will supposedly benefit from the findings of the study by being encouraged to take a critical stance on their questions. Therefore, I hope that such a study may inspire teachers to carry out similar action research studies. 1.8. Conclusion In this chapter, I provided information about the background of this study by briefly mentioning the key concepts that I explored in this study. Then, I touched upon the rationale to conduct this research and the importance of it along with the research questions that I will answer in this study. Finally, I provided information about the limitations and assumptions of the study. 11 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1. Introduction I will provide comprehensive information about the theoretical and the empirical background of action research and the place of teacher questions in L2 classes in this chapter of the thesis. I will start explaining action research itself and its connection with classroom interaction. Then, I will move on to explaining classroom interaction briefly and teacher questions in more detail. Furthermore, I will elaborate on teacher questions by mentioning the sub-dimensions related to the research questions of this study. Consequently, I will finalize the chapter by reporting previous research studies carried out on these sub-dimensions of teacher questions. 2.2. Action Research Action research, AR as of now, refers to a kind of research method conducted by the practitioners themselves with the aim of finding a solution to a circumstance occurring in their teaching environments that they deem as problematic (Burns, 2009). It includes the processes of discovery, improvement, and observation of changes of these problematic circumstances and reflecting upon them (Atay, 2008). These practitioners can be in any field researching their own work environments. However, when it comes to the field of education, they are mostly teachers. When teachers carry out action research studies, these studies are also called teacher research and both of them are placed under the umbrella term of classroom research (Dörnyei, 2007). Considering that the underlying reason behind conducting typical classroom research is to find a solution to a problem teacher-researchers face before they conduct such studies, they initially realize a problem in their teaching environments. This problem can be related to their students, principals, parents, materials they use, or their teaching styles. For instance, a teacher may realize their students’ lack of willingness to participate in the lesson activities and dwell on what he or she can do to increase students’ participation (Özgür, 2007). However, the motive of action research does not always have to be something the teachers struggle with. It can also be an issue they consider as missing, they want to improve, or a technique or a method they wish to try out in their lessons. To give an example, in a classroom with a prevalence of teacher- student interaction, the teacher may want to investigate whether pair and group work activities lead to an increase in students’ oral communication skills (Burns, 2009). Once they detect these kinds of problematic situations or other issues, they reflect upon them, plan what they can do about them and take necessary actions to solve them. 12 The steps the teachers take during the research process are referred to as the cycle of action research. Although multiple cycles have been developed for action research, the one put forward by McNiff (2002) is one of most frequently used, as shown in Figure 1. This cycle consists of 4 steps: observing, reflecting, planning and acting. When teachers apply these steps in the process of their research, firstly they identify the problem within their teaching environments (Burns, 2009). Having identified the problem, they plan what they are going to do in order to bring out a change for the better. Then, they act upon their schedule and collect data for their research during this step. After that, they start observing the outcomes of these changes and reflect upon them. However, as can be seen from the figure, the steps are not going downward or upward, therefore, it means they are recursive. In other words, researchers go back and forth between these steps while conducting their action research studies. Figure 1 Mcniff’s (2002) cycle of action research On the other hand, even though this type of research brings ‘a need to change the current circumstances’ in the minds of a researcher in practice, it may not always be the case. As Allwright (2015) argues, when teachers decide to carry out classroom research, their foremost intention should be to develop an understanding of what actually happens in the classroom. Besides, this effort should be carried out with learners together, since they are the participants of the research context, i.e. the classroom itself. Thus, this type of action research without a touch of change aimed to be brought is often referred to as exploratory practice. Furthermore, Smith (2015) acknowledges Allwright’s view on this matter and he also adds that exploratory action research can be followed by the step of ‘taking necessary actions’ after completing the initial research stages. In other words, the stages of observing and reflecting are considered as the parts of the exploration phase and planning and action are the parts of the action phase. These two groups of phases are applied in a cyclical manner. However, the basic difference between action research and exploratory one lies in the action part following the initial parts as can be seen in Figure 2. 13 Figure 2 Smith’s (2015, p. 40) cycle of action and exploratory action research 2.2.1. Self-Reflective Teaching: Self-reflection is a process that teachers often go through in order to evaluate their own teaching circumstances and make a change about them. If teachers want to bring out a change within those circumstances, then reflection with a critical angle becomes an inevitable process. This is because critical reflection leads the teacher to have an enriched comprehension of their teaching environments (Richards & Lockhart, 1996). The idea of carrying out teacher research is planted within the mind of teachers through the perspective of taking a self-critical and self-reflective stance towards their teaching context. Wallace (1998) links the teachers’ needs to take these two stances to their will to take a further step into their journey of professional development. In the light of this, Wallace proposed a model that presented the strategies teachers apply for their professional development. Conducting action research is one of these strategies and it is described as problem-directed and an effective strategy since it ensures finding the solution to the problem directly. Action research, as shown in Figure 3, is also the strategy applied within the reflective cycle that a teacher goes through. 14 Figure 3 Wallace’s (1998, p.14) model of professional development McNiff (2002, p. 18) states that “reflection on action” is essential in action research and this kind of research includes “learning in and through action and reflection” (p. 15). Therefore, Wallace’s model is concurrent with these views that the reflective practices take place during the process of action research. As presented in this model, the reflective cycle comprises taking the necessary steps to conduct action research. Therefore, the key to being a “critically reflective teacher” (Richards, 1991, p. 8) lies in contemplating problematic events by inquiring further about them and then collecting data to document these events to take necessary actions towards them. 2.3. Classroom Interaction Classroom interaction (CI), also referred to as classroom discourse (Walsh, 2006) or classroom communication (Farrell, 2009), is defined as the interaction that takes place face-to- face among the individuals in the classroom as a part of the teaching and learning process (Farrell, 2009). It has been a research topic in general education since the 1950s (Tsui, 2008) and foreign language education since the 1970s (Yeşilbursa, 2017). Ever since it has been an indispensable part of foreign language education. The reason why CI has been given that much 15 importance was due to the shift in theories of language education. Especially after the Sociocultural Theory that Vygotsky (1978) put forward, interaction and communication have been vital concepts for language learning, which led a variety of communication-based methods to emerge. Moreover, this novel idea of the vitality of interaction among the participants of language learning also encompassed the context in which this interaction took place, i.e., the classroom. Eventually, different areas of CI began to be investigated by means of classroom- centred research (Tsui, 2008). The interaction between the learners and the teacher takes place in a variety of ways and these ways constitute the different aspects of CI. Depending on who initiates the interaction, the type of interaction changes, such as on the teachers’ side, teacher-talk, teacher questions, teacher’s use of L1, and teacher feedback are of the teacher-initiated CI types (Chaudron, 1988). When the classrooms were teacher-centred, such types of CI were more of the popular ones in research. However, with the shift of classrooms being more student-centred, areas of CI including the students started to be considered as well. These included areas such as student- student interaction (Johnson & Johnson, 1985), student-initiated questions (Hughes, Packard, Reischl & Pearson, 1988), and peer feedback (Jacobs & Zhang, 1989). For the purposes of this study, I will not cover the students’ side of the CI and only mention the teacher’s side. Within the teacher’s perspective, I will touch upon teacher talk and teacher questions specifically and the latter more elaborately. However, before that I will briefly mention the relation of Sociocultural Theory with CI. 2.3.1. Sociocultural Theory: The theory by Vygotsky (1978) puts great emphasis on the role of interaction has on language learning processes of learners. His claim is that learners go through some stages through while learning a language with the help of someone who has more knowledge than the learner. He introduces this phase of learning as a new approach by calling it “Zone of Proximal Development” (p. 37) to compare learners journeys they go through alone and with the help of another person. Therefore, by going through zones, learners’ language skills advance. However, as I recently mentioned, this process can be accomplished with the help of someone else who can deliver his knowledge to the learner. As to how this knowledge transfer happens, it is achieved with interaction between those interlocutors. This learning process takes place in the language learning classrooms as well. Especially, L2 classrooms are spaces where opportunities for knowledge construction are created with the help of constant interaction between teachers and students (Sert, 2015). As Tsui (2008) said, the participants of a classroom, namely students and teacher, as well as the context itself all play a part in composing whatever is learned. Due to the fact that the teacher 16 acts as the ‘more knowledgeable other’ in the classroom, learners are guided mostly with the help of the teacher. However, in classrooms adapting a more learner-centred approach, learners tend to acquire knowledge from each other. Along with teacher-student interaction patterns created in classrooms, student-student interaction patterns play a huge role as suggested by this theory. Walsh (2006) also affirmed this view that learners with more knowledge and with better language performance can help other learners, and thus an effective learning environment is created. He continued that the teachers hold the key to make this happen. Therefore, when teachers strive to create learner-centred classrooms, they make room for more student-student patterns of interaction, which then leads students to play active roles in the knowledge construction processes of themselves (Benson, 2012). When the issue comes down to how teachers can manage that, they can introduce tasks and activities in which students need to interact with each other in order to complete them. However, the most essential way teachers pave the way to interaction-mediated learning is through their talk. The way teachers navigate the activities in the classroom, pose questions, and give feedback to learners affect the extent learning occurs through interaction. Especially teachers’ questions can scaffold students’ language learning. In an early study, McCormick and Donato (2000) attempted to find out this issue and having analysed teachers’ questions, namely echoic questions, they came up with the findings that teacher questions served this function. Moreover, more recently X. Yang (2021) found in her study that the variety of interaction patterns is dependent upon effectiveness of teachers’ questioning practices. Hence, the more the teachers are concerned about this issue, the more and variable interaction patterns that lead to cooperative and collaborative learning take place in the language classrooms. 2.3.2. Classroom Interaction in Online Learning Environments: Opportunities for CI can be created in traditional face-to-face classrooms as well as in online learning environments if effective strategies are employed. In fact, Can (2009) claims that the use of variety of web tools in online learning can enrich the effects one would get from a traditional classroom. He even asserts that language learning in online environments brings along the perks of social constructivist approach, namely collaboration and cooperation. As discussed in Subchapter 2.3.1., such communication patterns are needed to a great extent in foreign language learning classrooms. However, it is not to say that online learning environments are superior to traditional learning environments regarding the enhancement of various aspects of CI in L2 learning. Both of the contexts have pros and cons compared to each other. While face-to-face classrooms 17 provide learners with ample opportunities to make physical contact with each other by directly experiencing the mimics and gestures of others, online classrooms lack these chances. On the other hand, in online learning environments, learners do not have any boundaries to contact with each other in and out of the lessons (Perveen, 2016). Especially in synchronous learning during the lessons conducted in videoconferencing platforms, they can interact both with the teacher and their classmates by making use of chat box and breakout rooms. Besides, the students can even initiate online meetings by themselves at any time without the support of their teachers. Recent studies exploring different CI aspects taking place in online language learning environments showed that there was improvement in those aspects. In one study, the use of online tasks via an online web tool led to the advancement of learners’ interactional competences (Balaman, 2016; Balaman & Sert, 2017). Two more recently conducted studies showed that students’ engagement levels increased with the use of different techniques (Ekiz, 2021; Park & Park, 2022). Therefore, interaction in L2 classrooms can be achieved with the use of a variety, and most importantly, effective web tools implemented with careful design. 2.4. Teacher Talk Teacher talk refers to the utterances of the teacher within the classroom specifically accustomed for instructional purposes (Chaudron, 1988). It differs from the everyday speech of a teacher in that the teacher adjusts his/her tone, intonation, vocabulary, and speech rate accordingly. These adjustments in the teachers’ speech make the content they teach comprehensible to the students (Long, 1983). Considering this, it is regarded as highly essential in terms of providing comprehensible input for the students (Cullen, 1998). Moreover, constituting a large number of lessons, teacher talk is the backbone of any type of interaction taking place in the classroom. Besides its distinguishing aspects from everyday speech, different scholars identified some functions that teacher talk serve in CI. As described in the Flanders’ Interaction Analysis Model, some of these functions are as such: “(1) accepting pupil feeling, (2) praising or encouraging, (3) accepting pupil ideas, (4) asking questions 5) giving information or opinion, (6) giving directions, and (7) criticizing.” (Amidon & Powell, 1970, p. 209). Of these 7 functions, the first four are regarded as having an indirect influence and the last three are considered as having a direct influence on the students. Furthermore, similar to the functions above, Allwright (2014, p. 36) mentioned these eight functions of teacher talk: “1. modelling, 2. giving directions, 3. asking direct questions, 4. guiding structure drills, 5. rephrasing pupil response, 6. reacting to pupil performance, 7. 18 lecturing, and 8. reading-writing-spelling”. In light of these functions, some aspects of teacher talk along with those of CI were brought forth, such as teacher questions, teacher wait time, teacher feedback, teacher’s use of L1, and teacher-student interaction (Farrell, 2009; Thornbury, 1996). When teacher talk was analysed by scholars, models that depicted the interaction patterns between the teacher and students were put forward. The most prominent model, IRF, which stands for Initiation, Response and Feedback, is a type of teacher-centred interaction pattern. In this pattern, the teacher starts off directing a question to learners, then follows a reply from the learner and finally, the teacher concludes the talk with feedback relating to that reply (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). I provided an example of this pattern that I gathered from the data of this study as follows: Extract 1 An example of an IRF pattern T: Buse always wakes up early at 6 a.m. Buse is so surprised. ((teacher laughs)) ((Buse puts her hands on her mouth)) T: Okay, when you wake up early you feel energetic right? (initiation) S17: Yes. (response) T: Right, I'm happy to hear that. (feedback) There are also other structures in which question-answer session is followed either by students’ questions or comments relating to the topic. These structures give a great clue in identifying what kind of interaction, be it teacher-centred, student-centred, or a mixture of both take place in the classrooms. Besides, since the majority of the source of input and output for language learning is provided through communication between the agents of the classroom, especially in EFL classrooms where chances of language exposure are more limited than in ESL settings, it is of utmost importance that teachers take heed of these interaction patterns occurring in their classrooms (Walsh, 2011). 2.5. Teacher Questions Questions that teachers ask during their lessons are considered as a part of teacher talk and they constitute a great deal of it. In fact, in an earlier study, Stevens (1912) stated that almost eighty percent of teachers’ talk was made up of the questions they asked. Besides, other earlier studies found out that students were exposed to around 300-400 questions during a school day by a single teacher (Gall, 1970; Levin & Long, 1981). Covering such a huge proportion of teacher talk, teacher questions have been regarded as having significant roles in teaching (Gall, 1970), especially in CI (Hargie, 1978). 19 Although the definition of a question “has never been clearly defined” (Tsui, 1992), various definitions regarding what a question is have been put forward by different scholars and researchers. According to Jansem (2008), all utterances, regardless of their structures, expressed by teachers in order to get answers from their students are considered as questions. In accordance with this, Ur (1996) also stated that questions should not be limited to being interrogatives and all statements that have the goal to elicit a reply from the students, even if not in the form of interrogatives, are considered as questions as well. Furthermore, Wu (1993) identified questions not in terms of their structures, but the intended meaning in them given by the addresser of the questions. In other words, Wu stated that the fact that a sentence has an interrogative syntax does not make it a question, rather it should aim to seek a kind of information from the addressee. Regardless of the ambiguity of the definition of questions, the fact that teacher questions have a variety of benefits is a commonly held view in foreign language education. Regarding these benefits, Richards and Lockhart (1996) explained these benefits in two aspects, in terms of the teacher and the students. As for the teacher, their questions help them check whether their students have understood the content or not, clarify the utterance of their students and elicit specific linguistic items they aim to teach. As for the students, teacher questions make them focus on the lesson content, arouse their interest in the lesson, and eventually make them participate in the lesson activities. As for the teachers’ reasoning behind referring to questions a lot, two of the most prominent of reasons are to check students’ comprehension of the lesson content and to get answers from them either related to that content or out of content such as issues related to their personal lives and experiences. Apart from these, teachers also ask questions to enable students to recall the content, to have a deeper comprehension, enhance their imagination, and have problem solving skills (Brown & Wragg, 2003). Furthermore, teachers ask questions to weaker students in order to get them to participate in the lesson and ask to stronger students to let the former ones benefit from the latter ones’ answers (Ur, 1996). As much as the reasoning behind teacher questions matters, what matters likewise is that these questions are asked effectively. Ur (1996, p. 16) claims that effective questions are distinguished by the fact that they elicit “fairly prompt, motivated, relevant and full responses” from students. On the contrary, ineffective questions are the ones that can be answered only by stronger students and even their answers are shorter, and the wait time is longer. In a more detailed explanation, some of the characteristics of effective questioning strategies are listed as the following (Wilen & Clegg Jr, 1986; Wilen, 1987): 20 1. Effective questions are clearly phrased. 2. There is an ideal wait time between 3-5 seconds. 3. Questions that require high-level thinking are asked to intermediate and advanced students. 4. Questions that require low-level thinking are directed to elementary students. 5. Teachers make sure that they get a high percentage of correct answers by aiding the students. 6. Even if the answer is not entirely correct, teachers accept the correct part of the answers. Therefore, it can be inferred that teachers should not ask questions randomly, without taking these criteria into consideration. Otherwise, it can minimize both teacher satisfaction and student achievement. Even students are of the opinion that their participation in the lesson activities depends on the quality of questions directed to them (Dallimore, Hertenstein & Platt, 2004). Thus, teachers should be aware of the effect their questioning practices has on both students and them and work on developing these practices (Vebriyanto, 2015). In the next subchapters, I will mention the connection between critical thinking skills and teacher questions, along with the types and the functions of teacher questions previously specified by scholars and the frameworks developed accordingly. 2.5.1. Types of Teacher Questions: In order to identify the types of questions, different categorization patterns were put forward by scholars. Although a variety of criteria exists regarding the formulation of these different types of categorizations to be mentioned henceforth, two criteria are the most prominent ones. One is the type of answer that is demanded from the addressee by means of the question and the other is the cognitive level activated in learners’ thinking processes in order to reply to the question (Gall, 1970). One of the earliest and most well-known categorization belongs to Bloom (1956). In his Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, he classified the questions into different types in accordance with each item in the taxonomy. These items are listed according to the cognitive level of questions and ranked from the low levels to the high levels as such: 1. Knowledge, 2. Comprehension, 3. Analysis, 4. Application, 5. Synthesis, and 6. Evaluation. In the 1st level, as the name implies, knowledge level questions inquire about information-based answers from the learners. So, the learners do not need to contemplate or make an inference to answer such questions. Comprehension level questions, which can take the form of translation and interpretation questions, are those that are asked to check whether the learners have grasped the 21 content taught to them. Following this, analysis level questions are asked in order to make the students apply what they are thought to have comprehended earlier. The first three types which are of the lower-level cognitively demanding questions are followed by the last three types that are of the higher-level cognitively demanding ones. In analysis questions, learners are expected to divide the knowledge transferred to them into parts, see the connection and make inferences regarding it. Moreover, following the analysis, in the synthesis type of questions, what has been divided is now asked to be combined in an authentic pattern. For this, creativity is required to come up with new ideas and structures. Lastly, the level with the highest order of cognitive thinking, evaluation is made. Evaluation comprises all levels of thinking along with other skills such as critical thinking, inference, and making judgements. Based on Bloom’s taxonomy of questions, other terms to classify the questions came out such as lower-order, factual, convergent, recall questions, higher-order, and divergent questions (Ellis, 1993; Hargies, 1978). Of these 6 types, the first four are similar to knowledge and comprehension questions, so, the type of answer required from the learners is information- based. These questions require a comparatively lower-level thinking process as opposed to the last two, higher-order and divergent questions. So far, I mentioned the classification of questions in terms of the cognitive level has. However, there are even more question types offered by scholars based on different criteria. Some scholars based the classification criteria of questions on the grammatical forms of questions and their related answers and put forward types such as yes-no questions, wh- questions, and alternative questions which offers some options as answers in the question (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech & Svartvik, 1972; G. Thompson, 1997). Tsui (1992) mentions other categorizations of questions in terms of their functions and speech acts. For instance, questions can be regarded as illocutionary force, elicitations, and requests as well. Furthermore, Barnes (1969) came up with open and closed questions by distinguishing them as the former having a variety of possible answers, whereas the latter having only one definite answer. Also referred to as narrow-broad questions, open-closed questions are distinguished from each other in the answers expected for them (Wragg & Brown, 2002). Closed and narrow questions are examples of yes-no questions in which the probable answer range is fairly limited. On the contrary, open and broad questions are asked in the form of wh- questions where there is a variety of possible answers that can be given in response to them. Another classification of questions was introduced by Kearsley in which he offered these four question types: “echoic, epistemic, expressive, and social control.” (p. 360, 1976). 22 Similar to this, Long and Sato (1983) elaborated on echoic and epistemic question types by adding more subtypes. Echoic questions are relevant to the clarification or the repetition of the addressee’s utterance, whereas the epistemic questions are related to the inquiry of information. Moreover, each of these two question categories has subcategories as well. Clarification requests, confirmation and comprehension checks are of the three echoic question types. Clarification requests are directed in order to get a better understanding of what the addressee said. In addition, confirmation check questions are asked to ensure that the addresser understood the meaning behind the addressee’s previous utterance correctly. So, what these two questions have in common is that both of them is related to the addresser’s understanding. However, comprehension checks refer to the understanding of the addressee, so, they are asked to make sure that the interlocutor has fully comprehended what has been said or taught to them. As for the epistemic question type, referential, display, expressive, and rhetorical belong to this group. As mentioned above, referential and display referential questions are also of the question types that are frequently referred to and researched (Ayaz, 2020). In contrast to the category of questions based on syntax, these two question types are not distinguished by their grammatical forms. Any question type can be considered both as a display and referential question. However, despite the difference in the names of question types, the fundamental idea lying behind these questions is the same as the other types mentioned previously. Whereas display questions are the ones that call for fact-based and objective answers, referential questions are those that demand personal, experiential, and subjective answers. As far as the classroom context is concerned, these questions are distinguished by the fact that whether teachers know the answer to the question they asked beforehand or not (Vebriyanto, 2015). If the answer is unbeknown to the teachers and they genuinely wish to learn the answer, then it is considered as a referential question. However, in the cases that teachers are well aware of the answer yet ask the question just to check whether the student knows it as well, then it is regarded as a display question (G. Thompson, 1997; Wu, 1993). As for the other two types of epistemic questions, expressive questions are those asked with an attitude of the addresser and rhetorical questions are asked without an expectation of an answer from the addressee. Regarding the use of display and referential type of questions by the teachers in their classes, it was found that display questions were preferred by teachers with a higher frequency than referential questions (David, 2007; Long, 1983; Özcan, 2010; Vebriyanto, 2015). The most prominent reason for this finding was related to the easiness and rapidness in getting answers from the students to the display questions, especially those of the lower level (Farahian 23 & Rezaeeb, 2012). This difference leads teachers to favour display questions more and referential questions less. However, when the effect of these questions has been researched with regards to students’ opinions and the quality of their answers, the result is more favourable on the referential questions’ side. It is because referential questions were found to lead the students to produce longer and more syntactically complex structures (Brock, 1986; Özcan, 2010; Yılmaz, 2016). Moreover, referential questions were stated to be enhancing the communicative skills of the students (Wright, 2016). However, the academic and cognitive levels of students play a key role in determining which question type is more appropriate for the students. Thus, display questions are deemed more appropriate for the lower-level students, while referential questions are considered better for the higher-level students considering the possible answers that the teacher may get from each group of students to each question type (Gall, 1984). Another classification of question types was put forward by Richards and Lockhart (1996). They classified the questions according to their functions as follows: procedural, convergent, divergent. Procedural questions are those that are asked for managerial purposes, such as giving instructions, checking comprehension of instructions, or maintaining the discipline of students. On the other hand, although differing from each other, convergent and divergent are both used to deliver the content. The distinction between these two types is partly likened to that of closed and open questions in that while the former calls for short, one choice answers, the latter calls for longer and the answers can vary. In other words, the answer variety for convergent questions is fairly limited since the main focus is to check students’ comprehension or knowledge. These questions also only focus on improving lower-level thinking skills of learners. However, divergent questions differ from convergent ones due to the diversity of answer possibilities and the fact that they encourage higher-level thinking skills. These three question types can also be associated with Long and Sato’s (1983) types, such as procedural questions with echoic questions and convergent questions with both display and referential questions. Although divergent questions can be associated with referential questions, there is not a question type offered by Long and Sato that directly corresponds to critical thinking skills. With this in mind, I placed the referential questions in both types, namely convergent and divergent, by dividing them into two parts to make a better distinction. I thus came up with the following two question types: lower referential and higher referential. To give examples of them, while “Do you play computer games?” is a lower referential question since it only requires a short answer without a need for further contemplation, “What are the side effects of playing computer games too much?” is a higher referential question that calls for further thinking in order to come up with a related answer. 24 I will provide further examples of these question types in Subchapter 2.5.3. to elaborate more on this issue. Besides, I will present the frameworks relating to these question types which were used in previous research studies as data analysis instruments. 2.5.2. Functions of Teacher Questions: In accordance with the classification of the teacher questions into types, they were classified into functions as well. The functions of questions stand for the purpose of the addressers behind asking them, in other words, why these questions are asked and what specific purpose they aim to serve. In the literature of language teaching, the categorization of the functions of questions were made by explaining the purposes that were served by the question types mentioned in Subchapter 2.5.1. Thus, these two concepts, types and functions are interrelated with each other. Teacher questions contribute to the enhancement of many aspects of CI. Either conscious or unconscious of their contributions, teachers make use of questions quite a lot in their lessons. Turney, Cairns, Williams, Hatton and Owens (1973) mention twelve functions of questions as follows: 1. To arouse interest and curiosity concerning a topic. 2. To focus attention on a particular issue or concept. 3. To develop an active approach to learning. 4. To stimulate pupils to ask questions of themselves and others. 5. To structure a task in such a way that learning will be maximized. 6. To diagnose specific difficulties inhibiting pupil learning. 7. To communicate to the group that involvement in the lesson is expected, and that overt participation by all members of the group is valued. 8. To provide an opportunity for pupils to assimilate and reflect on information. 9. To involve pupils in using an inferred cognitive operation on the assumption that this will assist in developing thinking skills. 10. To develop reflection and comment by pupils on the responses of other members of the group, both pupils and teacher. 11. To afford an opportunity for pupils to learn vicariously through discussion. 12. To express a genuine interest in the ideas and feelings of the pupils. Furthermore, Ur (1996) and Richards and Lockhart (1996) separately list reasons for asking questions that are very similar to Turney et al’s (1973) list. In addition to the abovementioned functions, these scholars also state that questions help learners’ thinking skills to be stimulated, which shows that thinking skills of any kind, be it imaginative, reflective, or logical, and questioning practices of teachers are closely related. Cotton (1998) further states 25 that questions especially help learners enhance their critical thinking skills along with the questions they direct to their teachers too. While some scholars described the functions of questions in general as serving a variety of purposes and explained these as Turney et al (1973) did, some others explained the functions of specific question types. Being one of them, the classification of questions into three types by Richards and Lockhart (1996), as I already mentioned in Subchapter 2.5.1., is accompanied by further explanation of functions of these types. So, procedural, convergent, and divergent questions were used both as a means of the analysis of type and functions of questions in research studies interchangeably (Hamiloğlu & Temiz, 2012; Öztürk, 2016). Moreover, some others categorized the functions by naming them irrespective of question types. For instance, Kauchak and Eggen (2012) categorized functions of questions and named them diagnostic, instructional, and motivational. Asking questions to get any kind of reply from students, whether of knowledge or opinion, serve the diagnostic function. This function comprises both the purposes of asking display and referential questions. Asking questions to deliver students the content knowledge serve the instructional function. Finally, directing questions to ensure student participation in the class serves the motivational function. S. Thompson (1998) puts questions into two categories regarding the fact that whether an answer is expected or not. When an answer of any sort is expected to a question, it is called an audience-oriented question. However, when the addressers ask the question without any expectation of an answer and immediately give the answer themselves, this is called a content- oriented question. However similar it may sound to rhetorical questions, these two types differ from each other in that while no answer is given to rhetorical questions such as ‘Who knows?’, an answer may be provided to the former type of questions, such as ‘Why? Because…’ (Chang, 2011). In accordance with these two question types, their functions were by S. Thompson (1998) as well, which are mostly similar to Turney et al’s (1973) functions of questions mentioned above. Audience-oriented questions have these purposes; eliciting a response, ensuring the comprehension of the content by asking for confirmation and calling for an agreement. On the contrary, content-oriented questions are asked to bring the attention of learners to the content by giving it a specific focus while asking such questions (Camiciottoli, 2008; Chang, 2011). Camiciolottoli and Chang added some other functions under the category of audience-oriented questions and used these and the previous functions to analyse the questions’ functions in their own separate studies. I presented all of these functions in Table 1 26 below by adding the initials of scholars who came up with them (T: S. Thompson, Cam: Camiciottoli, C: Chang) Table 1 Adaptation of S. Thompson’s (1998) classification of functions of questions Question Functions Audience-Oriented Content-Oriented Eliciting response (T) Focusing information (T) Soliciting agreement (T) Stimulating thought (T) Checking comprehension (T) Requesting confirmation/clarification (Cam.) Class management/engagement (Ch.) Another classification of functions of questions was developed by Freed (1994). With the aim of conducting an analysis to identify the functions of the questions collected for her study, she came up with the taxonomy as seen in Figure 4. Upon developing this taxonomy, she emphasized that a single question could have several functions which can be varied according to the context it was uttered. Thus, contextual information carries the utmost importance in determining the function of a question. In addition to taking the context as criteria, she identified which function questions could serve in terms of whether they aimed to call for or convey information. Consequently, she put forward the following four functions: external, talk, relational, and expressive, along with a few subcategories for each of them. 27 Figure 4 Freed’s (1994, p. 626) taxonomy of functions of questions In a more recent classification, Myhill, Jones and Hopper (2005) proposed eleven functions of questions as can be viewed in Table 2. Thus, according to them, questions have the function of managing the classroom, eliciting information, providing clues for answers, building on content, enhancing thinking skills, summarizing, practising skills, checking students’ background knowledge, improving vocabulary, checking comprehension, and enhancing reflective thinking skills of students. The majority of these functions put emphasis on teaching the content in various ways. In other words, one type of question may have several functions. For instance, display questions may both aid teachers to elicit knowledge from students and recall their background knowledge, moreover, referential questions may both enhance students’ reflective skills and make them express their opinions. Thus, as can be inferred from this categorization, the functions of questions are more varied than the types themselves. Table 2 Myhill et al.’s (2005, p.73) categorization of functions of questions Function of question Definition Class management Related to management of behaviour/tasks Factual elicitation Asking for recall of fact/information Cued elicitation Giving clues to answer 28 Building on content Gathering information about the topic/theme Building on thinking Making children think about the ideas and concepts; this moves ideas forward, unlike the checking understanding, which looks back at ideas already covered Recapping Recalling past lessons and work done in this lesson Practicing skills Inviting children to rehearse, repeat or practice a strategy or grasp of understanding Checking prior Checking child’s knowledge and experience which might be knowledge relevant to lesson Developing vocabulary Testing or clarifying understanding of words Checking Querying understanding and checking grasp of learning understanding undertaken Developing reflection Inviting children to think about how they are learning and the strategies they are using A more recent categorization of functions of questions were put forward by Ernst-Slavit and Pratt (2017). They suggested functions to the following five types of questions: higher- order, reflective, parlance, display, and managerial questions. According to their suggestion, higher-order questions serve the purpose of assisting learners to make analyses and inferences, reflective questions help students’ reflective thinking skills to be enhanced, and parlance questions have the function to aid learners to give answers specifically accustomed to a genre. Furthermore, display questions help students to recall what has been learned previously and finally managerial questions help teachers maintain discipline in the classroom by giving necessary instructions through these questions. 2.5.3. Frameworks of Question Types: Based on the abovementioned types and functions of teacher questions, several frameworks were put forward by scholars and later used in the research studies as the instruments to conduct data analysis to classify the questions. The majority of the frameworks were similar due to the fact they were adaptations of each other. One of the earliest frameworks is that of Bloom’s (1956), which was originally referred to as a taxonomy since it listed the question types according to the cognitive load required to answer it. Each of the six question types in the taxonomy was exemplified by Bür (2014, pp. 97-98), which I took from her own study as shown in Table 3. 29 Table 3 Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy of questions Questions Types Examples Knowledge Could you translate it into Turkish? Comprehension What did you understand from this ad? Analysis What would the words be (to use in this situation)? Application In the future, you will be teachers. How will you incorporate multiple intelligences in your classes? Synthesis What is the alternative, then? Evaluation If a child were asked who is happier, a child or an adult, what would the child say? Another framework belongs to Kearsley (1976, pp. 360-362) which forms the basis of many more frameworks considering the adaptations made from it. The four main categories are echoic, epistemic, expressive, and social control and within epistemic and social control, there are two more subcategories which I explained briefly in Table 4. This framework categorizes the questions, not in terms of their syntactic patterns but the functions they serve and the kind of information they aim to get from the addressee. Table 4 Kearsley’s (1976) framework of teacher questions Question types Explanations 1. Echoic They ask for the repetition of an utterance or confirmation that an utterance has been interpreted as intended. 2. Epistemic They serve the purpose of acquiring information. 2.1. Referential They provide contextual information about situations, events, actions, purposes, relationships, or properties 2.2. Evaluative They are asked not for the informational content of the answer but rather to establish the addressee's knowledge of the answer. 3. Expressive They are asked to get attitudinal information to the addressee. The expressive content of the question is independent of its information content. 4. Social Control They are also independent of the information content and used to exert authority by maintaining control of the discourse. 30 4.1. Attention They allow the questioner to take over the direction of the discourse. Their metamessage is "listen to me" or "think about this." 4.2. Verbosity They are asked only for the sake of politeness or to sustain conversation. After Kearsley (1976) came up with this framework, Long and Sato (1983) made adaptations from it by adding a few more subcategories combining them under two main categories as presented in Table 5. They added three more question types under the echoic question type, which are comprehension checks, clarification requests, and confirmation checks. Besides, they added three more question types under the epistemic question type other than referential questions, which are display, expressive, and rhetorical. I collected the examples of the question types presented in the table below from Lindenmeyer’s work (1990, pp. 24-25). Table 5 Long and Sato’s (1983) framework of teacher questions Question types Subcategories Examples 1. Echoic Comprehension checks All right? Clarification requests What?, Huh? Confirmation checks Did you say “he”? 2. Epistemic Referential Why did he do that? Display What’s the opposite of up? Expressive Words are interesting, aren’t they? Rhetorical Why do we do that? Because… Inspired by Bloom’s and other earlier question classification systems, Wilen (1991) proposed his version of such a framework. Similar to Bloom’s taxonomy, his framework ranks the question types in terms of the extent to which they are cognitively demanding. Basically, there are two categories in this framework, which are convergent and divergent. In addition to the difference in the cognitive level between these two question types, the variety of answers that can be given to them set them apart too. While the possible answers to convergent questions are narrow, the answers to divergent questions can be quite diverse, with a variety of expression styles and opinions. These two main categories are comprised of also two subcategories within each, which are named as low order and high order questions. The examples of each question type are provided in Table 6 (Cunningham, 1987). 31 Table 6 Wilen’s (1991) classification of questions Question types Convergent Divergent Low Order High Order Low Order High Order Convergent Convergent Divergent Divergent Examples of questions How would you use Why do you think What are some What kind of a plan the directions violence on different titles we might be devised to provided in the television appeals to might give to this reduce violence on resource materials to so many people? story? television? solve this problem? Furthermore, Gabrielatos (1997, p. 2) offered a relatively simpler framework by categorizing the questions into four main types and naming them as “pedagogical questions” as shown in Table 7. Although names differ, the functions of some questions in his framework are similar to those of Kearsley’s (1976) and Long and Sato’s (1983). For instance, questions with only one correct answer which the teacher already has the knowledge of are referred to as evaluative questions by Kearsley, display questions by Long and Sato, and convergent questions by Gabrielatos. Moreover, questions that ask for the opinion, thought, or experience of the learners and the answer of which the teacher does not know are referred to as referential by both Kearsley and Long and Sato and divergent by Gabrielatos. Table 7 Gabrielatos’ (1997) classification of questions Question types Explanations Convergent There is only one correct answer to them. Divergent They invite the learners to express views, opinions or alternatives. Yes/No They can only be answered using ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Open-ended They elicit more regarding the answer length. A less comprehensive and elaborate classification of questions belongs to Todd (1997). In this framework presented in Table 8, Todd basically groups the questions into three main types which are echoic, low-order, i.e. epistemic, and high-order questions. Only under the low- 32 order question type are two more subcategories, which are display and referential. This framework is kind of a recap of the types of the abovementioned frameworks with an extra touch of differentiating the types in terms of their level of promoting thinking skills. Table 8 Todd’s (1997) classification of questions Echoic Low-order (Epistemic) High-order Display Referential What do you mean? What does it What is your Why do you prefer living in mean? favourite TV the countryside? show? As can be seen from the six frameworks above, questions were subjected to a variety of classification patterns. In some of them, questions were named similarly and, in some others, they were named differently despite having similar functions. To determine the frameworks to be used for the data analysis of this study, I took the question types I mentioned in Subchapter 2.5.1., functions I mentioned in Subchapter 2.5.2, and frameworks I listed in Subchapter 2.5.3. into consideration. I thus developed the frameworks in Tables 9 and 10 in accordance with the previous works of scholars. Concerning the framework for question types as presented in Table 9, I adapted it from Long and Sato’s (1983) and Todd’s (1997) classifications. In this adaptation, I included Long and Sato’s pre-existing echoic and epistemic types and sub-types of them; comprehension check, clarification request, confirmation check, display, and referential questions and excluded expressive and rhetorical questions. Moreover, I divided referential questions into two parts in terms of the cognitive level activated by these questions, as lower referential and higher referential. I got inspired by Todd’s framework presented in Table 8 (1997) in this distinction. Moreover, I added questions in the form of requests as inspired by Altun’s study (2010). I made these adaptations upon reviewing the research questions, doing a pre-analysis of the questions I collected in this study, and realising the need to come up with more types and remove some others. The main reason why I considered Long and Sato’s (1983) framework as convenient to use in order to categorize the types of my questions was that this framework provided a quite comprehensive and elaborate classification of question types by making clear distinctions between each question type. Thus, when I examined data of this study prior to the classification 33 of question types, I realized that the need to classify such a variety of questions could be met by such a comprehensive framework. Besides, the questions found in this study easily corresponded with these existing types. As for other types that I added from Todd’s classification, since this study also had a focus on identifying the frequency of critical thinking questions, a categorization of that sort was needed. That was why I grouped referential questions into as the ones promoting low-level and high-level thinking skills of students as lower referential and higher referential questions. Table 9 Adaptation of Long and Sato’s (1983) and Todd’s (1997) question types Echoic questions Epistemic questions  comprehension checks:  display: Did you understand? What is the meaning of this word?  clarification requests:  lower referential: Can you explain more of it? Do you like riding on rollercoasters?  confirmation checks:  higher referential: Did you mean that? What can you do to protect wildlife?  requests: Could you please speak louder? The last but not least, the need for a framework to analyse the functions of questions was met by the classification made by Richards and Lockhart (1996), as shown in Table 10. I did not make any adaptations in this framework. I thus utilized all the three functions which were procedural, convergent, and procedural. On the other hand, I associated the types of questions I listed in Table 9 with these three functions, in terms of the purposes these types served. Table 10 Richards and Lockhart’s (1996) functions of teacher questions Procedural Convergent Divergent Can you read the What is the answer to this What would happen if keep paragraph? question? polluting the environment? Consequently, Table 11 presents the combination of the types and functions of questions listed in the two frameworks above. This is the framework that I decided to use in order to 34 identify my questions in terms of their types, functions and whether they promoted the critical thinking skills of my students or not. Table 11 The framework I used for the analysis of my questions Procedural Convergent Divergent Echoic questions Epistemic questions  comprehension  display  higher referential checks  lower referential  clarification requests  requests  confirmation checks 2.5.4. Critical Thinking Skills and Teacher Questions: It is an undeniable fact that teacher questions have a tremendous effect on students’ learning progress. Along with this kind of contribution, teacher questions assist learners’ cognitive skills to be improved as well. In terms of cognitive skills, the skills that help learners think in a more critical, reflective, evaluative, imaginative, and creative manner are referred. The focus of this subchapter, critical thinking skill is considered as one of those skills and it is also mentioned as one of the 4Cs of 21st century skills, which are collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking (Bağ & Gürsoy, 2021). Critical thinking, which I will refer to as CT as of now, is dated back to as early as Socrates’ era when he originated his way of questioning (Paul & Elder, 2016). This way of thought consists of a structured, logical, and profound method of thinking and mostly drives the thinker into actions such as solving a problem or dealing with an issue. Thus, it emphasizes exploring a phenomenon or a problem in order to come up with a justifiable solution (Kurfiss, 1988). In terms of language learning, such actions are needed to activate the content knowledge that has been taught and these can be accomplished with the help of critical thinking skills (Richards & Burns, 2012). Therefore, CT is also deemed as a skill and in accordance with this, Potts (1994) explains what this skill covers as follows: 1. identifying the connections among parts of information, 2. figuring out the relevant parts of information in order to solve problems, and 3. coming up with different ideas to deal with problems. Concerning the relation this skill has with the teacher questions, we can see that they have a strong connection with each other since questions play an important role in ensuring the 35 enhancement of this skill. Paul and Elder (2016) emphasized the significance of this connection by stating that the atmosphere for the development of critical thinking can be ensured with the help of teachers formulating their questions accordingly. They underline this statement by saying: Any teacher concerned with the development of the student’s mind must be concerned with the role of questions in teaching and learning, for it is through our questions that we understand the world and everything in it. It is through our questions that we understand subject matter and academic disciplines. It is through our questions that we express our intellectual goals and purposes. It is through our questions that we think superficially or deeply. (Paul & Elder, 2016, p. 62) Critical thinking skill is associated with higher-order questions, specifically the types of which I previously mentioned as the last four question types of Bloom’s taxonomy: analysis, application, synthesis, and evaluation questions. In addition to these four, other question types such as divergent questions in general and specifically higher-order convergent and higher- order divergent (Wilen, 1991) are also regarded to enhance the CT skills of students. Of the most referred question type in the literature, referential questions which call for students’ own opinions and thoughts on a matter aid learners’ construction of CT skills as well. However, as discussed in the subchapter above, not all examples of referential questions have this function. Questions of this type are distinguished by the answers given to them, whether open-ended or close-ended, and whether learners need to contemplate further by making inferences, giving further examples, doing analysis or so on. In addition to this, open-ended questions, in general, serve this function as well since there is no limit to the possible answers to be given to this kind of questions, which do not restrict the students’ creativity and line of thought (Potts, 1994). Upon mentioning the specific question types that enhance students’ CT skills, the utmost importance of including these questions in the flow of the lesson should be mentioned as well. King (1995) states a presence of a direct link between the questioning habits of teachers and students’ critical thinking skills by stating that the higher the level of teacher questions are, the higher the level of students’ thinking will be. Moreover, she asserts that: “good thinkers are good questioners” (1995, p.13), meaning that when teachers ask higher-order questions, it eventually leads students to ask such questions as well. Therefore, CT does not only affect students’ way of thinking by leading them to make analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of issues, but it affects their questioning habits as well by enhancing them. Furthermore, Feng (2013) points out that the key in bringing out the best questioners among students lies in teachers being 36 good questioners themselves, which calls for them to be conscious of the types and functions they ask in their classes. Previous studies conducted regarding this topic showed that the use of higher-order questions facilitated the development of CT skills of students, and the lesser use of such questions deterred the integration of CT in classes. In some of these studies, the researchers explored the use of higher cognitive level questions of Bloom’s taxonomy and questioning techniques by teachers and found out how using the related types of questions and techniques could lead to the enhancement of CT skills of students (Kholisoh & Bharati, 2021; Rosalina, Setiawan & Suhartono, 2019; Yuliawati, Mahmud & Muliati, 2016). In another study, a direct and positive effect was found between the use of higher-order questions and the score the students had from the test regarding CT skills (Song, 2019). On the other hand, regardless of the effective aspects of teachers’ questioning behaviours on CT skills of students, it does not necessarily mean that this aspect is not taken for granted. The fact that this issue has not been given significance sufficiently can be inferred from the results of other previous research studies which show that teachers in practice do not make use of higher-order questions as much as they use the lower-order questions (Bür, 2014; Mustika, Nurkamto & Suparno, 2020; Özgür, 2007; Phuong & Nguyen, 2017). The results of these studies indicated that the lesser focus on CT means the lesser improvement of students’ CT skills. Furthermore, considering the connection between students’ CT and teachers’ questioning strategies, we can see that teachers’ own CT is directly related to the manner they produce questions. In an attempt to test this connection, Şeker and Kömür (2008) measured the scores of pre-service English teachers’ CT skills and analysed their questions. They came up with the result that the higher CT these English Language Teaching (ELT) students had, the higher cognitive level their questions were. This particular study proves the significance of teacher training towards this issue and how students may be affected by it. Consequently, educating teachers about the importance of CT and the planning of their questioning strategies with a strong emphasis on it is extremely crucial. 2.6. Studies on Teacher Questions Teacher questions have been a prominent research topic and a great variety of its dimensions have been addressed in the previous research studies. Some of these dimensions are the wait time allotted for questions, the effect of questions on students’ language skills, performance in the tests, and responses. However, in this subchapter, I will report research studies conducted to explore only some aspects of teacher questions in relation to the aim of 37 my thesis study. Therefore, the studies to be mentioned here will be as follows: 1st: Action research studies exploring teacher questions, 2nd: Studies identifying the frequency, types and functions of teacher questions, and 3rd: Studies researching students’ opinions about their teachers’ questions. Since this particular study is conducted in an EFL context, the studies to be mentioned here will be likewise. Therefore, being out of the scope of this study, I will not report related studies conducted in ESL contexts here. 2.6.1. Action Research on Teacher Questions: Considering how essential it is for teachers to be self-critical and self-reflective towards their teaching and make a change in their teaching environments, carrying out action research is as much essential. In fact, a previous study showed that when pre-service teachers were given chances to reflect upon their teaching practices critically, their practices improved which led to an increase in the effectiveness learners got from lessons (Bozbıyık, 2017; Bozbıyık, Sert & Bacanak, 2022). However, the benefits that the action research may bring with it do not always encourage the teachers to carry out this kind of research. As a matter of fact, teachers’ ever present heavy workload and insufficient knowledge about the steps of conducting research are of the two important reasons of action research’s not being so prominent among other research studies (Dörnyei, 2007). Despite the challenges faced by the teachers to conduct action research studies, some teachers endured them and took the initiative to carry out such studies. The majority of such studies were about various aspects of CI (Haerazi, Vikasari & Prayati, 2019; Uztosun, 2013). On the other hand, regarding exploring their questions, even fewer teachers emphasized their research specifically on this aspect of CI. Those who did are reported in the following paragraphs. In one study, Özcan (2010) investigated the impact that the type of teacher questions asked in reading lessons had on the students’ participation. The teacher was also the researcher of this action research and her motive in conducting this research was to find out the underlying reasons behind the students’ low grades in the final exams in the previous years and their reluctance towards participating actively in the lessons. To overcome this problematic situation, the researcher observed four of her lessons and identified the type of questions she had asked in them. Moreover, she counted students’ answers to her questions and asked for their opinions regarding these questions. As a result, she found out that she had asked more display questions than referential ones. However, when it comes to students’ answers, it was found out that they replied to referential questions more and they preferred them to the display questions. Furthermore, when the answers given to both types of questions were compared, it was found that the students answered referential questions more than display questions and gave even 38 longer answers. Thus, it was inferred that questions that require more personal answers lead students to produce more replies and are more favoured by them. In another study, the effect of the language the teachers used in the classroom had on CI was explored (X. Meng & Wang, 2011). The underlying idea behind this research lies in the hypothesis that interaction between the teacher and the students is fairly constricted due to teachers’ extreme concern towards transferring the content knowledge during the classes. 10 teachers of English were observed, and 104 university students were given a questionnaire to voice out their opinions and preferences of teacher talk for this matter. The questionnaire aimed to find out the effect of many aspects of teacher talk such as teacher questions, teacher feedback, interaction patterns, and teaching method. The results of the questionnaire showed that as for the teacher questions, most of the students preferred to be asked referential questions and said they were content with being frequently exposed to these questions. As for the feedback, students expressed that they would like teachers to give them corrective feedback with hints and suggestions included and give the feedback without demotivating them. Regarding the interaction and the teaching method, most of the students opted for a more student-centred method, in which there would be more activities that promoted different interactive patterns. Consequently, this research shows how students’ opinions on the aspects of CI mattered. Furthermore, Öztürk (2016) conducted an action research study in which she explored the frequency and the types of her questions directed to pre-intermediate level university students. Having analysed her lessons, she found that she had mostly asked convergent questions, sometimes procedural questions, and rarely divergent questions. As for the functions of the convergent questions which she used the most predominantly, she used them to check students’ understanding and go over vocabulary and grammar. Upon completing her research process, she reflected on the results and stated that she was not aware of the questioning practices she employed in her classrooms at all. Moreover, she was astonished by the fact that she made use of so many convergent and so less divergent questions. Therefore, by means of this research, she discovered these facts and intended to work more upon this issue, which is a great indicator of the significance of carrying out action research. The last study belongs to Sahamid (2016), in which she aimed to find out the effectiveness of Socratic Questioning (Paul & Elder, 2016) on developing ESL students’ higher-order thinking skills. Due to the scarcity of action research carried out on exploring teacher questions, I chose to include this particular research even though it was carried out in an ESL setting. The teacher-researcher in this study intended to see to what extent her questions, when using another technique, enhance her students’ critical thinking skills. Teaching high 39 school students literature, she realized that they lacked the competence of analysing the texts given to them. With this problem in mind, she decided to use this technique in her class for 16 weeks and observed the changes by utilizing various research instruments. At the end of her research, data of her study revealed that there was an improvement in students’ CT skills, which was observable through essays and journals they wrote, and teacher’s field notes based on the lessons. Although all the students showed improvement, high and medium-level learners developed their reasoning and analysis towards the texts much more than low-level learners. Her study contributed to the literature by showing that teachers’ planning their questioning practices carries a lot of importance. As it can be understood from the studies above, carrying out such action research studies contributed to the development of questioning practices of these teacher-researchers to a great extent. These studies enabled them to become enlightened of how they made use of questions and even whether they made use of some types of questions or not. This enlightenment does not solely concern themselves as a teacher, yet it affects their students to a great extent as well. 2.6.2. Frequency, Type and Function of Teacher Questions: In the following studies, while defining their aims to carry out research and write research questions accordingly, researchers intended either to explore all three aspects of teacher questions, which are the frequency, types, and functions or they aimed to find out only one or two of these aspects. The majority of the studies I will mention henceforth dealt with identifying both the frequency and types of questions or both the types and functions. However, only one study focused solely on identifying functions. I will report these studies according to the congruity of their research focus and their results in the following two subchapters. Considering the multiple focuses of these studies, I will report some of them twice in both subchapters in relation to their focus. 2.6.2.1. Frequency and Types of Teacher Questions: Being among the majority of studies inquiring both frequency and types of questions, C. C. R. Yang (2010) conducted a study to disclose the use of questions of pre-service teachers. Three pre-service teachers who taught classes of the same grade yet in different school contexts and English levels were the participants. The study revealed that closed and display questions outnumbered open and referential questions. On the other hand, the teacher of one class who taught students of higher English level made more use of open and referential questions, whereas other teachers did not use these types of questions at all and made more use of yes/no and closed and display questions. Thus, teachers’ choice of questions was congruent with students’ level and the type of school they studied in. Similarly, Farahian and Rezaee (2012) explored the types of questions used in five lessons of a novice EFL teacher with intermediate level students. They found that 40 the teacher in this study mostly directed yes/no, closed, and display questions and rarely directed open and referential questions as well. In this study, the teacher’s choice of questions can be explained by his lack of experience and awareness of the effect the various types of questions may have on students. Furthermore, Shakibafar and Bajalan (2012) identified the frequency of the types of questions asked by an EFL teacher with intermediate level learners. They found out that the teacher utilized display questions the most, referential the second, closed the third, and open the fourth and the least. It was concluded that even though the English level of the learners was appropriate to ask referential and open questions, the teacher did not make use of them, which points out the significance of training the teachers regarding the importance of asking questions appropriate to learners’ level. Similarly, Erlinda and Dewi (2014) explored the frequency and the types of questions of five lessons of an EFL high school teacher. The total number was 480 questions which made up about 90 questions per lesson on average, although the actual number varied. When these questions were classified, six types of questions were found and the order in terms of the prevalence of them was as such: 1. closed, 2. display, 3. procedural, 4. referential, 5. open, 6. rhetorical. Additionally, Vebriyanto (2015) explored the types of teacher questions and the length of students’ responses. The study revealed that display and closed questions were asked more in number than referential and closed questions. Besides, the frequency of questions in each lesson was dependent on the content that was taught. Mousavi, Arizavi, Kalhor and Namdari (2015) also came up with the concurrent findings with the previous study, which is the fact that display questions turned out to be more prevalent than referential questions. Using Long and Sato’s framework (1983) to analyse questions, Vivekmetakorn and Thamma (2015) aimed to explore the frequency and type of questions of two EFL teachers along with the interaction pattern created out of these questions. As a result, in terms of two main categories of question types, epistemic questions outnumbered echoic questions. In addition, display questions outnumbered referential questions likewise in the abovementioned studies. So far, a maximum of four different question types were dealt with in each of the studies above. On a different note, Karakuş (2018) analysed twelve types of questions by using G. Thompson’s (1997) classification of teacher questions. Similar to C. C. R. Yang (2010), Karakuş also worked with teacher candidates by intending to discover the variety of question types that they used and the purposes they served. To find this out, these prospective teachers’ lessons carried out during their practicum courses in their final year were observed. Besides, 41 they were interviewed to learn more of their thoughts on how questioning practices of a teacher should be. The analysis of the lessons revealed that these twelve teacher candidates made use of display questions the most. As for the purposes of these questions, they were more frequently used to check students’ understanding and start a new topic and less frequently used to maintain classroom management and increase interaction. Additionally, Omari (2018) took six types of questions into account for the analysis of questions. These were closed, open, display, referential, high-level, or low-level, described according to Bloom’s taxonomy. These six types were grouped into two pairs each differing in terms of specified criteria. However, when analysing data, the total number of questions were analysed according to each pair of questions separately without taking the other pair into account. The questions detected in the lessons of seventy-seven teachers from all grades, who were observed once was data of the study. According to that, it was found that these teachers asked a total of 1574 questions. Out of them, closed, display, and low-level questions outnumbered open, referential, and high-level questions. In addition to that, the study used school types, experience, and grades as the variables to see whether these factors played any role in the difference of questioning behaviours of teachers. The results of statistical analysis indicated that school types and experience were not determinants of this difference. Nevertheless, it was seen that grade was a significant factor in explaining the difference in the frequency and the type of question used. In other words, the higher-level the students were, the higher-level questions were asked by the teachers in this study. In another study, Altun (2010) explored the frequency and types of questions of ten teachers who taught university students to find out whether experience played a role in the varieties of their questioning behaviour. The results showed that both groups of teachers asked display questions more than they asked referential questions. As opposed to Omari’s study (2018), Altun’s study revealed that experienced teachers made use of referential questions more than the less experienced ones. However, years of experience only made a difference in the variety of types, yet it did not make a difference in the number of questions asked by both groups of teachers, in fact, it turned out that both groups asked nearly the same number of questions. Partly similar to Altun’s (2010) and Omari’s (2018) studies, the researchers in this study aimed to find out whether experience was a determinant in the variable questioning styles of teachers (Pourhaji, Zahedi & Saadatara, 2019). For this, the lessons of four EFL teachers, two novices and two experienced who teach beginner level adult learners were recorded. Their data revealed that in terms of the frequency of questions, the experienced teachers asked more 42 questions than novice teachers in total. This finding contradicts those of the two studies above in which experience was found to make no difference in the frequency. Regarding the types of questions that were analysed according to Long and Sato’s framework, echoic questions were asked the least and epistemic questions were asked the most by two groups of teachers. Furthermore, experienced teachers asked more questions regarding all types except one; evaluative questions, which was asked more by novice teachers. Therefore, it can be inferred from this study that experience can play a role in terms of the difference in the questioning styles of teachers. In a study identifying all three aspects, Hamiloğlu and Temiz (2012) explored the frequency, types, and functions of questions asked by teachers doing a practicum at primary and secondary schools. In terms of form, yes/no questions outnumbered wh- questions and in terms of answer type, the frequency of display and referential questions did not have significant differences. However, it may have been because the researchers did not differentiate them among the analysed yes/no and wh- questions, thus, the result may have changed if data was put into a different analysis. Moreover, Broidl (2015) conducted a study to explore different aspects of questions of three non-native English teachers working with high school students. She compared the frequency of different question types occurring in the lessons of these teachers. The comparison of her data revealed that, although various in numbers, all three teachers asked more open questions and less closed questions. Besides, display questions were asked much more than referential questions. Even though one teacher asked these in almost the same amounts, this did not affect the overall result. Finally, in terms of the content of the answers, questions asking for factual answers were asked more than the questions calling for opinion and reason-based answers. So far, the results of studies revealed the predominance in the use of display questions by teachers. On the other hand, some studies came up with the predominance of referential questions. One of them is Tharawoot’s study (2016), in which he identified the types of questions asked by three EFL university lecturers and the effects of different types of questions on students’ responses. This study surprisingly revealed that two lecturers among those three asked more referential questions and fewer display questions, and the third lecturer did vice versa. However, the total number of referential questions exceeded display questions asked in all observed lessons. Analyzing the questions directed to sixth graders by three English teachers, Aprina and Andriyanti (2020) also found that all the teachers in this study asked more referential questions than display questions although the frequency varied in each. 43 In another study, Şimşek and Kuru Gönen (2020) intended to find out the types and functions of questions asked by three EFL university instructors along with the goals behind asking these questions. The analysis of their data resulted in epistemic questions outnumbering echoic questions. It also revealed that the participants in their study made more use of referential questions and less use of display questions. Moreover, placed under the category of echoic questions, clarification requests were the least asked question type. Although the great majority of studies made use of similar frameworks to identify question types, some studies used other frameworks. In one of these studies, Chafi and Elkhouzai (2014) conducted a study to explore the types and functions of teacher questions of twenty elementary school teachers. The researchers identified the frequency, types, and functions of questions in terms of Myhill’s framework (2005). It was seen that factual questions outnumbered the other three types: procedural, process, and speculative. It was also found that questions enhancing the critical thinking skills of students were hardly detected. Furthermore, Matra (2014) based her analysis of two teacher’s questions on Bloom’s taxonomy and found that the teachers only used knowledge, comprehension, and application questions, so, they did not make use of other types of questions, which were regarded as higher cognitive level questions. Besides, in terms of the experience of teachers, it was found that experience did not play a role in the type of questions asked but it only affected the frequency of questions, since the more experienced teacher asked more questions, as it was so in a previously mentioned study (Pourhaji et al., 2019). By taking another research approach, the researchers in this study explored the effect of certain question types in promoting CI (Al-Zahrani & Al-Bargi, 2017). To observe the effect, they recorded eleven lessons of seven teachers in total who taught university level EFL students. By taking the complexity level of questions and types of questions into consideration while analysing their data, they found out that the level of interaction that occurred during the classes was directly related to the level and type of questions asked. In other words, lower-level questions; knowledge, comprehension, closed, and display questions led to IRF type of interaction pattern. On the other hand, higher-level questions; application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, open, and referential questions were found to promote interaction patterns with increased teacher-student interaction in terms of questioning. Consequently, in this study, questions that promote more teacher-centred questioning patterns were observed more and questions that enhance less student-included questioning patterns were observed less. Additionally, Toni and Parse (2013) explored what types of questions a teacher with lower-intermediate level students asked to enhance CI. Having analysed data according to 44 Bloom’s taxonomy, the researchers found that the question type that the teacher most frequently used was inference questions, which is the type added by Brown (2007) and considered as a higher-order question. As for the other types, the order of frequency was as follows: 1. inference, 2. comprehension, 3. application, 4. evaluation, 5. knowledge, 6. analysis, 7. synthesis. When compared to one of the studies mentioned above (Shakibafar & Bajalan, 2012), even though this teacher had lower-level learners than the other teacher in that study, the teacher here used more higher-level questions than the other. Furthermore, Döş, Bay, Aslansoy, Tiryaki, Çetin and Duman (2016) explored many aspects of the use of questions by 170 elementary school English teachers. Regarding the frequency of question types, divergent questions were utilized more frequently than convergent questions. Moreover, higher cognitive level questions according to Bloom’s taxonomy were asked more than the lower cognitive level questions. If divergent questions are associated with open and referential questions, and the convergent questions are associated with closed and display questions, this association and the results of this particular study indicate that these results differ from the results of research studies in which convergent questions were found more frequently. In an attempt to discover the association between teachers’ reflective practices and their questioning styles, Tavakoli and Davoudi (2016) conducted a study with a different aim from other studies mentioned so far. For this, firstly they subjected the teachers to a test to find out to what extent they apply reflective practices in their careers. Then, they observed the pre- recorded lessons of eighteen EFL teachers working at a private language institute with different level learners. After then, they analysed the questions the teachers asked during the lessons within a month according to Bloom’s taxonomy. Their analysis revealed that the more reflective teachers were, the more number of questions they asked, which indicates a significance in the connection between the variables of this study. On the other hand, it was seen that the types of questions teachers made use of, especially in terms of the level of cognitive demand, did not vary among the teacher to a great extent. Therefore, it meant that high reflective scores of teachers did not mean that they made use of higher cognitive questions more, it only signified the higher frequency of questions. In addition to this, Caravaca (2019) carried out an experimental study to test whether training teachers towards enhancing their questioning techniques makes a difference in their questioning behaviours, especially in terms of critical thinking. For this, three teachers teaching CLIL to primary school students and their three classes were chosen and two of the teachers were given training related to the purposes of the study and one was not. The classes of these 45 three teachers were observed before and after the training and the observations revealed that in the classes the teachers of which who took training, there was an increase in the amount of cognitively higher-level questions. However, in the control group, lower-level questions were predominantly used and there was no increase in the higher-level questions, which also affected the quality of the students’ responses. Thus, this study highlights the significance of teachers being cognizant of their questioning practices. 2.6.2.2. Functions of Teacher Questions: In a study that put emphasis on exploring the connection between teacher questions and critical thinking, Özgür (2007) identified the functions of these questions. Comparing data gathered from the lessons of three teachers who taught in a university context, she aimed to find out the functions of questions they asked to see whether they served the development of CT skills and also whether there were any differences regarding their experience and their nativeness or non-nativeness. In terms of frequency, her results were concurrent with the research of Pourhaji et al. (2019), which was that the more experienced the teachers were, regardless of their nativeness, the greater number of questions in general and high-order questions specifically were asked by them. However, when the total number of questions regarding their types and functions were compared, it came out that all three teachers used considerably lower-level questions with a greater frequency and higher- order questions with fewer frequency. These specific functions used by teachers in the order of frequency were stated as follows: “1. Questioning Viewpoints and Perspectives, 2. Probing Implications and Consequences, 3. Probing Rationale, Reasons, and Evidence” (Özgür, 2007, pp. 72-73). Moreover, Darong, Niman, Su and Fatmawati (2021) did research to identify the functions of questions of six EFL university teachers. Data were analysed in terms of Freed’s framework (1994). It was found that the following functions stated in the order of frequency were used: talk, relational, external, and expressive. Furthermore, the subfunctions which became more prevalent were checking students’ content knowledge and explaining further about the content. In addition to this, another outcome of this study was the fact that some questions had more than one function and they were all verified by looking at the context in which they were asked. Thus, teachers have purposes of asking questions in the class even though they do not always identify them and without taking the intention of the teachers or their teaching contexts into account, it cannot be possible to identify these functions. I already mentioned the following studies in Subchapter 2.6.2.1. without stating their focus on functions of questions, therefore, I will mention them briefly with that particular focus henceforth. In this study, Hamiloğlu and Temiz (2012) analysed their data in terms of the aims 46 of questions that were asked by using Richards and Lockhart’s (1996) classification of questions. They discovered that teachers mostly asked convergent questions with the aim of checking the knowledge and comprehension of students. The second most prevalent questions were divergent questions, asked to get students to think further on issues by stating their opinions However, teachers rarely used procedural questions, which are associated with managerial issues. Moreover, Chafi and Elkhouzai (2014) utilized Myhill’s framework (2005) to identify questions’ functions. Therefore, it was revealed that the most prominent functions were factual and cued elicitation which refer to the purpose of recalling information and giving cues for answers, whereas the least prominent ones were developing reflection and building on thinking. Therefore, it can be understood from the results that higher-order thinking skills were not the focus of teachers in this study. However, teachers’ choice of questions can be reasoned with the age and level of their students. Additionally, Döş et al. (2016) explored many aspects of the use of questions by 170 elementary school English teachers. Out of these aspects, they researched the purposes behind these questions, in which they found that teachers mostly asked questions to attract the interest of learners to the content, then to increase critical thinking skills, and help students to express themselves. However, they seldom asked questions for managerial reasons. Apart from the specified functions stated in the studies above, a study aimed to identify what type of modes, also known as classroom micro-contexts, the teacher questions had. Simply put, these modes refer to the purpose that the teachers carry behind their talk in class. Concerning this, Course (2014) researched sixty prospective English teachers’ use of questioning considering to what extent they used these modes described by Walsh (2006; 2011) in his framework called SETT (Self-Evaluation of Teacher Talk). It was found that teachers used material mode as the most, managerial as the second, classroom context as the third, skills and systems as the fourth and the least. In other words, teachers mostly made use of questions to deliver content through the material. Moreover, regarding the question types, some outnumbered the others as the following: close-ended display and referential questions whereas open-ended display and referential questions. The latter ones were the least frequently used question types. From this study, it can be inferred that teacher questions are asked for specific purposes and these purposes help identify the modes of CI occurring in the class. Furthermore, also using modes in their analysis of the function of the questions, Şimşek and Kuru Gönen (2020) found that teachers asked questions more in order to ease the language production process of learners and less for the teaching content through the materials being used, i.e., classroom context mode and materials mode. Consequently, it can be inferred from 47 this study that teachers’ preference of types of questions they use in their classes is directly linked with the purposes behind asking them. 2.6.3. Students’ Opinions of Teacher Questions: The number of studies emphasizing the way students perceive teacher questions is relatively fewer when compared to the studies exploring other dimensions of these questions. Being both one of these studies and one that I mentioned in the subchapter above, Tharawoot’s study (2016) explored what university students thought about the types of questions that their teachers asked them. By answering a related questionnaire given to them, the students expressed that they favoured referential questions more than display questions. Moreover, even though they stated that they were pleased with their teachers’ questions in general, they were more pleased with the questions of teachers who asked more referential questions. Therefore, this study revealed that students preferred being asked about their opinions. Moreover, using an experimental method in her study, Wright (2016) asked the opinions of university students regarding the questions that she asked them as their teacher during her lessons. In the lessons that they had for the study, she did two activities with her students in which she asked display and referential questions separately in each of them. After then, students were asked about their opinions regarding these questions in an interview and they stated that they were more in favour of the activities with referential questions asked to them. Surprisingly, when students expressed their reasons behind choosing this specific question type, they said it was because this type of question motivated them and encouraged them to produce longer responses. Moreover, these questions made them check the accuracy of their responses before giving them which indicated that they tried harder to produce better output. Consequently, their language production skills were enhanced by the help of these questions. Alshabatat (2017) also intended to find out the views of high school students about their teacher’s questioning style. The teacher’s questions were specifically evaluated in terms of whether they enhanced students’ critical thinking skills in reading lessons or not. Besides, students were divided into different experimental groups and were taught with different questioning techniques, both for the teacher and student questioning, during the study. After that, students were interviewed in order to express their views relating to this aspect. When they were asked whether they regarded the questions as hard to answer, the results were almost equal in between the students who found the questions as easy and hard to answer. On the other hand, they commented positively on teachers’ questions, especially relating to the fact that they thought these techniques helped them improve their critical thinking skills along with their own questioning skills. 48 In another study, Rido (2017) attempted to find out both the question types of three experienced teachers working at three different high schools and their students’ opinions regarding them. Although differences in the frequency of questions were detected, the teachers made use of a variety of question types, the closed and display questions being more prevalent and open and referential questions being less prevalent. As for the students’ ideas, they expressed favour of these questions and stated that they enabled them to enhance their oral communication and higher-order thinking skills. It is important to add that the context of this study was a vocational high school the students of which were taught English specifically for their prospective jobs. Therefore, the teachers asked their questions with a focus on that and students were well aware of their teachers’ intent, which made them indicate a positive opinion about the questions. Similar to Rido’s study (2017), the researchers in this study (Nuryani, Tarjana & Hersulastuti, 2018) explored the attitude of high school learners towards their teachers’ questioning techniques. Students were handed out a questionnaire, in which they were asked to express what they thought in terms of the frequency of their teachers’ questions, the functions they served, and strategies that teachers made use of. They generally expressed positive attitudes towards these questions and teachers’ strategies and added that the way that teachers structured questions enabled them to comprehend the lesson better and answer easily, the result of which indicated a significance in the positive attitude that the students had. Thus, it was found that the students were mostly content with the way teachers directed questions. Furthermore, Prasetianto (2019) asked the presumptions of learners regarding the level and the effect that their teacher’s questions may have had on them. To find this out, the researcher initially identified the frequency and type of teacher’s questions, in which he found the most prevalent question type as convergent questions, whereas one of the least prevalent ones were divergent questions. However, students expressed that they favoured divergent questions more since they thought they were more effective in speeding up their learning process than convergent ones, in fact, none of the students opted for convergent questions. Similar to the first two studies reported above (Tharawoot, 2016; Wright, 2016), the participants in this study were university students as well. Thus, having asked their opinions of teacher questions, the researchers found out that the majority of the students expressed their favour of the questions (Ullah, Hakim & Ullah, 2020). They also stated that these questions were effective in that they led them to participate in the lessons’ activities, increase their self- esteem, motivation, and interest in the lesson. Congruent with the study above (Ameiratrini & 49 Kurniawan, 2020), although not too many, some students also disagreed with such effects of questions. The last study I will report here belongs to Kemaloğlu-Er (2021), in which she emphasized it on solely one question type, referential questions, and explored their forms and functions. For this, writing lessons of pre-intermediate level university students of one teacher were analysed. Regarding the forms of the questions, the teacher asked wh-, yes/no, intonation, and this/that questions and as for the functions, four of them were identified as follows: communicative, productive, motivational, and pedagogical. The frequency or the order of usage of the forms and functions were not stated. In addition to this, the researcher aimed to find out the participants’ views regarding the use of referential questions in their lessons. Most of the students in this study expressed that they were content with referential questions, and they made them participate in the lesson activities more since they helped them relate the topic to their personal lives and opinions. Furthermore, students expressed that these questions aided them in their writing process and enabled them to produce better quality output. To sum up the abovementioned studies, the learners the views of which were asked held mostly similar views towards their teachers’ questioning practices. Overall, they expressed positive opinions by giving such reasons: these questions increased their motivation, led them to participate more in the activities, helped their language skills, and their thinking skills to be improved. Besides, they specified the effects some types of questions may have had on them by saying that divergent, open-ended, and referential questions contribute more to their learning process and enable them to produce better language output. On the other hand, some students expressed discontent as well and that was mostly related to the fact that they either felt uncomfortable answering these questions or regarded them not so easy to be answered. As can be observed from the studies mentioned so far, several dimensions of teacher questions have been addressed to a great extent by researchers. The majority of these studies belong to ones exploring either frequency, types, and functions of questions. In terms of the overall results inferred from these studies, we can see that the teachers whose questioning practices were observed mostly made use of closed, display, and convergent questions. On the other hand, the teachers directing open, referential, and divergent questions were less prevalent. Furthermore, fewer questions serving the purpose of developing the critical thinking skills of learners were detected. Moreover, it can be seen that there is a scarcity of classroom research carried by teacher-researchers exploring their own questions. 50 2.6.4. Teacher Questions in Online Learning Environments: The studies I will report here were conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic era where emergency remote teaching protocols were used. I will specifically mention such studies to be able to make an association of their findings with that of mine due to the similarity of settings. Some studies focused on researching teacher questions as a part of dimensions of teacher talk. Being one of these studies, although this one does not directly emphasize teacher questions, it is partly related in that the researched explored high school learners’ views on the aspects of teacher talk in general and reported the views on each aspect specifically (Ameiratrini & Kurniawan, 2020). In terms of their views on teacher questions asked to them in online classes, although most of the students were content with them, some of them expressed discontent as well. This indicates a different result from the other studies exploring students’ views of teacher questions that I mentioned in Subchapter 2.6.3. One of those students expressed that being questioned pressured him and gave him a sense of being a student who was not understood by the teacher because of being subjected to questioning. This shows the importance of avoiding cold calling, which refers to making the reluctant students participate in the lesson when sensing the students’ reluctance. Moreover, Albayrak (2021) investigated a few dimensions regarding three instructors’ questioning practices working at preparatory school at a university. She aimed to identify the frequency and types of teachers’ questions, measure the impact certain question types have on CI, and teachers’ views of their questioning practices. As for the frequency, it was found that the more experienced teachers asked a greater number of questions. As for the types, epistemic questions outnumbered echoic ones, and display questions outnumbered referential ones. Although less in number, teachers used procedural questions a lot as well and reasoned their use with the need to ensure classroom management in online classes. It was also discovered that although students participated in the class often, referential questions increased their engagement since the students tended to reply to them more. Finally, teachers expressed that they noticed a change of their questioning practices in online teaching and developed more awareness about it. In another study, Ülker Mermer (2022) explored three teachers’ use of questions in their classes to find out how what extent of their talk comprised their questions, which types these questions were, and whether the teachers made prior planning of their questions. She found that questions consisted of one third of each teacher’s talk during and among those questions, they made more use of display questions compared to referential questions. As for prior planning of questions, only one of the teachers said that he did that. 51 So far, the three studies I mentioned above were conducted in settings where synchronous learning platforms were used. However, in the setting of the study I will mention now only asynchronous learning tools were utilized. Using Richards and Lockhart (1996) classification of questions, the researchers explored a teacher’s use of questions to high school learners during the pandemic (Wiratama & Padmadewi, 2022). They found that the teacher in the study used mostly convergent questions followed by procedural and divergent questions. When the students were asked their views on their teachers’ questions, the majority of them expressed positive views on them. 2.7. Conclusion In this chapter of the thesis, I elaborated on key issues related to this study as follows: action research, classroom interaction, teacher talk, teacher questions, critical thinking, and their relation to each other. I specifically mentioned the dimensions of teacher questions in more detail. Then, I presented the findings of research studies which explored this issue in EFL classrooms. 52 CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 3.1. Introduction In this part of the thesis, I will give information about the methodological procedures in the study. Firstly, I will mention the aim of the study and the research questions. Next, I will give detailed information about the design, setting, and participants. Then, I will provide an account into data collection instruments I used, how I collected my data, and analysed it. Finally, I will elaborate on the reliability and validity issues in relation to this study and conclude with my remarks on my role as the researcher. 3.2. Aim of the Study and Research Questions Being one of the important aspects of CI, teacher questions provide teachers with a lot of details regarding the aspects of their questioning techniques. Such aspects are the type and functions of questions they ask, their effectiveness in terms of improving students’ L2 skills, teachers’ and students’ views about these questions, the wait time allocated for the answers, the feedback given after that, and the patterns of CI created by means of these questions. When teachers find out and become aware of which questions they have used in their classes and which functions these questions serve, they could revise their questioning styles for the better to improve the quality of their lessons. With this in mind, in this research, I intend to find out some aspects related to the questions I ask in my classes as a teacher. The questions I aim to find answers to in this research are as such: 1. What is the frequency of each question I ask in 6th grade EFL classes? 2. What are the types of the questions I ask in 6th grade EFL classes? 3. What are the functions of the questions I ask in 6th grade EFL classes? 4. What is the frequency of the questions I ask in 6th grade EFL classes that enhance the critical thinking skills of my students? 5. What are my students’ views of the questions I ask in 6th grade EFL classes? 3.3. Design This study adopted a qualitative methodology due to the nature of the research issues under exploration. Data for this study comprise audio and video recordings of 50 online lessons and a student questionnaire with open-ended questions that ask them to report their opinions about my questions in our classes. I mostly made use of qualitative data analysis procedures in the data analysis such as coding of my questions according to their types and functions, conversation analysis of lesson recordings, and content analysis of the learner questionnaire. 53 However, I analysed some of my data quantitatively while calculating the frequency of my questions and the answers my students gave to some of the items of the questionnaire. Concerning how a qualitative study is defined, it involves a comprehensive, elaborate, and abundant interpretation of a social phenomenon (Mason, 2002). It is also described as an approach that researchers take to grasp the meaning that a group of people associate with the problems they encounter (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). Thus, researchers opting for qualitative research design intend to establish an in-depth understanding of the events they explore with their lenses. When they report their understandings of a phenomenon, they may as well reflect their inferences and interpretation because they are considered as the most essential research instruments (Miles, Huberman & Saldana, 2018). The reason qualitative researchers play such a key role in qualitative studies is that they are in close contact with the participants through the data collection process and they have the chance to make scrutinised observations of the research setting and the phenomenon they explore. What distinguishes qualitative research from quantitative research is the manner in which data is collected and analysed, in other words, while the former is not necessarily associated with data subjected to numerical analysis, the latter is so (Mackey & Gass, 2022). Thus, in qualitative studies, data is collected through instruments like interviews, lesson recordings, diaries, journals, and open-ended questionnaires and subjected to such methods of analysis as coding and content analysis (Dörnyei, 2007). Besides, while there is room for interpretation of data from the perspective of the researcher in qualitative studies, it is not the case for quantitative studies. On the other hand, despite the distinctions between these two research designs, they are not considered as completely divergent (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). Some of the data collection instruments and analysis techniques can be interchangeably used with one another. Although working with numbers is not so typical in qualitative studies, counting how many times an event occurs is common in such studies, especially in classroom settings in the observation of teacher talk, student talk, or student behaviour. Since qualitative studies are conducted with the goal of the exploration of a circumstance, environment, or event, studies in which the classrooms are set as the context, i.e. classroom research, are considered a part of these studies as well. In this type of research, the classroom is observed with a specific purpose in its natural components, without an intervention of any sort or an intention to test out the effectiveness of a technique or method (Mackey & Gass, 2022). Being a type of classroom research, action research is carried out by teachers themselves exploring their own teaching circumstances by going through steps of observation, reflection, planning, and action. Therefore, this particular study implements action research by 54 exploring the way teacher makes use of questions by going through the cycles of this research type. 3.3.1. Action Research Cycle of the Study: As depicted in Figure 1 and 2 in Subchapter 2.2., the cycle of AR involves four essential stages, namely observation, reflection, planning, and action. Since I conducted an exploratory action research, my essential purpose behind conducting this study was to inspect and have a full grasp of my questioning practices. Thus, the exploratory nature of my study did not require me to implement a change regarding this issue within the timespan of my study (Allwright, 2015). As Smith suggested (2015), I left the action part for the following processes upon completing my study. Henceforth, I will depict the stages I went through during the study, will go through after the study, and associate them with the AR cycle. I presented the explanations of the stages of my research in Figure 5. So, I went through the first two of the action research cycle during the timespan of this research, both during and after the data collection process. I had the chance to observe myself and my questions during our lessons especially by watching the video recordings of my lessons and reading the transcriptions of them. While calculating the frequency of my questions and identifying them into their types and functions, I kept referring to these data back and forth because I needed to ensure whether I uttered some statements as questions, what my purposes were behind asking the questions, and whether they were content- related or not. So, as I was going through Step 1, I had the chance to make a lot of observations. However, my observations were not limited to the focus of my study. The more I observed, the more I realized other aspects of my questioning practices such as how much wait time I gave to my students and how my students answer them as well. 55 Figure 5 Action research cycle of the study • Watching the video recordings of my lessons Step 1: • Reading the transcriptions of my recordings Observation • Reading the answers my students gave in the questionnaire • Reflecting upon the frequency, types and functions of my Step 2: questions and the frequency of the critical thinking questions Reflection • Reflecting upon the the views' of my students about my questions • Preparing my questions with more care before lessons Step 3: • Assessing the needs and interests of my students to make use of Planning questions more suitable to my teaching context • Increasing my awareness of my questioning practices Step 4: • Adapting my questioning practices to fit into my teaching Action context The observation step was followed by reflection and in this step, I contemplated upon the rationale I had behind applying the questioning practices as I was doing. I reflected upon the extent of my awareness of this issue, the contextual differences, such as my students’ background information, L2 levels, willingness to participate in the lessons, that could drive me into using some question types more or less than the others. Moreover, I pondered on the distinguishing features of our online lessons and made me wonder to what extent my questioning practices were different in our face-to-face lessons we had before the Covid-19. In addition to my perspective, I reflected upon the attitude my students had towards my questions and the factors that may have led them to have such attitudes, be it positive or negative. The 3rd and 4th steps are closely interrelated with each other and although I did not take yet, my reflections of the findings of my study sparked some ideas in me regarding the planning stage of my future actions. The reasons why I did not implement these two stages within the timespan of the research were both because I had a very limited time I was granted to conduct my research and also my aim was to conduct an exploratory action research, as I explained above. To specify, I intend to make a more elaborate and meticulous prior planning of the questions I would ask. In order to achieve that, I need to take some contextual factors into serious consideration such as my students’ ages, L2 levels, and interests while planning my 56 questions. For this, I can take some action by measuring the levels of my students by a test and the interest of them by a needs analysis. Then, I can adapt my questioning practices to fit into my teaching context. 3.4. Setting Since this is an action research study, I decided the setting of the study as the institution I worked at, which was a state secondary school in the Sancaktepe region of İstanbul, Turkey. The study took place in the 2020-2021 educational year. The school was located in a central district of the city with students whose families had either middle or low socio-economic backgrounds. Since this educational year coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic, all of the lessons were carried out on online platforms for the 6th graders during the whole year, except for the last month of the educational year, which did not coincide with the data collection timespan of this study. The platform in which the online lessons were conducted were EBA Live Lesson, which was powered by Zoom. Normally, face-to-face lessons in the actual school environments lasted for 40 minutes, but the online lessons lasted for 30 minutes to keep the students away from the screen more and to make their attention span longer by making them less distracted during the lessons. 3.5. Participants I chose the participants of this research from the school I worked at by convenience sampling. This kind of sampling is decided in the best interest of the researchers in terms of proximity and availability of their research contexts (Dörnyei, 2007). In my situation, of the six classes I taught, two of them were the most appropriate ones for the purposes of this research because the number of English lessons they had each week was higher compared to the other classes I taught. These two classes were 6th grade students with 32 and 33 students in them. In one of the classes, there were 32 students, 16 students from both genders. In the other class, there were 33 students and while the number of boys was 21, the number of girls was 12. The students were between 10-12 years old. I will refer to these two classes as Class A and Class B from now on. A is the class with 33 students and B is the class with 32 students (Table 12). Table 12 Participant information Class A B Total Girls 12 16 18 Boys 21 16 37 Total 33 32 65 57 When the students in these classes were 5th grade students, they were placed in different classes than the other 5th graders, which the Turkish Ministry of National Education named as “5th Grade Language Classes” (MoNE, 2018b). While the other 5th and 6th graders’ English proficiency level was A1 as stated by MoNE (2018a), the levels of language classes became A2 as they became 6th graders. The other 5th and 6th grade classes had a minimum three and maximum five lessons of English each week. On the other hand, the language classes had an intensive English programme with eleven hours of English per week when they were 5th graders. Besides, they were given different lesson materials, one being a coursebook with a focus on integrated skills approach and communicative language teaching, the others were coursebooks and story books with a focus on different language skills. Thus, they both had a lesson in which the main coursebook was used and separate lessons for each language skills, listening, speaking, reading, writing, and also grammar in which other materials were used. This explained the difference of the proficiency levels in two different class types that were specified by MoNE. When the students in the language classes started the 2020-2021 education year as 6th graders, they continued the same programme with nine hours of English per week. Of these nine hours, I had seven of them in each class to teach English. The other two hours were taught by another two colleagues of mine. One of them was the teacher of Class A, and the other of them was the teacher of Class B. As for the lesson material, they used four books; a coursebook, a reading book, a test book, and a skills book, prepared by a private publishing house that we selected as English teachers of these classes. Of these four books, I used two of them; the coursebook and the reading book, in my classes, assigned the test book, as homework, and the skills book was used by another English teacher. These books were not commissioned by MoNE, we selected these books together with our colleagues to use in these classes. All of these four books were designed in correlation with the curriculum of the English lessons prepared by MoNE. They had ten units in each of them and these units were built around different themes, such as the weather, holiday, and environment. I will specifically mention the two books I actively used in the lessons I recorded for this study. The coursebook had an integrated-skills approach to language learning, so, there were all types of activities in it serving to enhance four language skills of learners. In terms of grammar teaching, explicit instruction was predominant and there were form-focused grammar exercises. There were also vocabulary lists and exercises related to the themes of the units. The reading book had a few reading passages in each unit and the only activities in the book was the comprehension questions about the content of these texts. The book focused on vocabulary teaching, reading, and writing skills of the students. 58 Due to the number of hours of their English lessons and since they had the most of them with me, the students in these classes were chosen as the participants of this study. The number of hours they had English lessons also affected the frequency of both L1 and L2 I used in my classes. I could speak more English and less Turkish in the lessons I had with these classes, therefore, I could ask more English questions with different types and functions compared to the other classes in other grades I taught in my school. Therefore, I deemed these two 6th grade classes more appropriate for the purposes of this study. The first part of the data collection process is comprised of video recordings of the lessons. All of the students who participated in the online lessons in these two classes also participated in this part of the study. So, in both of the classes, all of the students took part in the recordings, except for two or three students in each class who did not join the lessons at all or did not join steadily. However, as for the questionnaire, only the volunteer students who wanted to fill out the questionnaire contributed to this part of the study. The number of students who participated in the second part was 18 in Class A and 15 in Class B. Moreover, the distribution of girls and boys were as such: 10 girls and 8 boys in Class A, 8 girls and 7 boys in Class B. 3.6. Data Collection Instruments I collected mainly qualitative data in the present study. Two different types of data collection instruments were used consecutively, which were the recordings of online lessons and student questionnaires. 3.6.1. Lesson Recordings: The first set of data were the audio and video recordings of the 60 English lessons I had with two classes I mentioned above. I collected these data through Zoom’s feature of recording. In classroom research, depending on the specific research questions, either audio, video, or both recording methods are used. Using video recording as the data collection instrument may bring along some disadvantages with it in physical classroom environments, such as students’ getting tense, acting unnaturally knowing that they are recorded, and even declining to be recorded (Dörnyei, 2007; Mackey & Gass, 2022). However, being recorded in online classrooms may not cause such worries in students since there is no physically obtrusive recording device, an observer, or a researcher conducting the research, which alleviates the process for them. Furthermore, video recording provides the researcher with an opportunity to observe the research context several times after the recording and look for the details that have not been detected previously. Considering the purposes of this study and why both recording techniques were chosen, full transcriptions of the lessons were required to identify both teacher talk and student talk, the 59 latter needed for the analysis of questions. Since voices kept overlapping with each other during the lessons, it was not possible to suffice with solely audio recordings. Otherwise, it was impossible to detect who actually said what also because the voices kept coming and going due to connection problems. Regarding these facts, I opted for both recording types as the most convenient and useful data collection tools. To give more information about these recordings, each online lesson usually lasted for a minimum of 30 minutes. However, because Zoom allowed a maximum of 40-minute time span for each meeting, our lessons sometimes extended to 40 minutes, too. I had seven hours of English lessons with each class in a single week. I recorded most of these lessons each week for a complete of six weeks. But due to a number of reasons, I could not record a few lessons and I could include five out of these seven lessons in each class in each week in the actual data. One of these reasons was that in some weeks, some of my lessons coincided with national holidays, so, I could not have any lessons on those days. Another reason was that in each week, there were one or two lessons out of these seven during which I did not ask any questions because I devoted these lessons to either teaching content, solving end of the unit tests, or playing English games with my students. Thus, I transcribed and analysed most of data except for the lessons in which I did not ask any questions, which I discarded. As for the lessons in which I asked only few questions, after the transcription process, I compared them with the other transcribed lessons and opted for the other lessons in which there were more teacher questions and discarded the former data. Finally, among these 60 lessons, I selected 50 of them. I considered the first 10 lessons as data of the pilot study, and the following 50 lessons as the actual data of the study. 3.6.2. Student Questionnaires: As for the second data collection tool, I used a questionnaire that I designed. I named this questionnaire: “Students’ Views of the Teacher Questions” (Appendix 1 and 2). The questionnaire consisted of open-ended questions that required short answers which asked the students their opinions and preferences about my questions. The questionnaire consisted of two parts and had nine items in total, six in the first part and three in the second. In the first part of the questionnaire, I added ten questions that I asked to my students in the lessons we had during the data collection process of this study (See Table 21). I thus selected these questions from the lesson recordings and presented them to my students in two different tables along with their functions (Appendix 1 and 2). I did not provide the context of these ten questions such as the topic I was teaching then, the theme of the unit, or the specific lessons in which I asked them. Since the questionnaire was three pages long, I did not want my students to be distracted with a lengthy questionnaire by spending too much 60 time on trying to understand the items of the questionnaire. Because the pilot study showed me that the longer the questionnaire was and the more complex the questionnaire items were, the harder the students understood and replied to the items. Besides, because I administered the questionnaire right after the following week of data collection process, my students were familiar with the context of these questions. Thus, proving my students with a list of ten of my questions, I expected them to answer the majority of the items in the questionnaire considering these questions. Moreover, in the other questionnaire items, I also requested my students to review the questions I asked them generally in our lessons. In the first question of the first part, I asked my students to evaluate these questions according to their opinions as ‘hard to answer (1), easy to answer (2), and very easy to answer (3)’ on a 3-point Likert scale. Following this question, in the next two questions, I asked my students to state the reasons for their opinions about the same questions. In the following questions, I wanted my students to choose the questions a) they did not prefer, b) they preferred less, c) they preferred more, and d) they preferred the most. After that, I expected them to state the underlying reasons for their preferences. As for the second part of the questionnaire, it consisted of two open-ended questions in which I wanted my students to evaluate the questions I asked to them in our lessons in general, not particularly in the recorded lessons, regarding to what extent they were comprehensible and easy or hard to answer. In the final question, I requested my students to express their opinions regarding the type of questions they would like me to ask in our future lessons. After I designed the questionnaire, I took some measures to ensure its reliability and validity. Initially, I tested the questionnaire with a pilot group of students from my institution. These 20 students who participated in the pilot study were also 6th graders with the same English level and had the same number of English lessons and content per week. Besides, I used to teach this class in the previous education year, so, I knew that they were the best match to be the participants in the pre-application of the questionnaire. Once the students answered the questionnaire, I analysed their answers to find out whether they understood the questions well enough to answer them. Accordingly, I revised the items of the questionnaire for the participants of the actual questionnaire. Following the pilot study, I took the opinions of three experts to ensure the content and face validity of this data collection instrument. These experts were academicians working in the field of ELT in two different universities who had research experience in classroom interaction. Once I evaluated the experts’ opinion forms, I calculated the content validity ratio according to the ratings of the validity of the items expressed by those experts. I revised the 61 items with the least content validity ratio. In addition to it, I also evaluated the ratings and suggestions given by the experts regarding the face validity and made necessary revisions likewise. After all the revisions, the questionnaire was ready to be administered to the students. However, I left the part which included the questions I asked in the lessons to be revised after the recordings. For the pilot study, I included the questions I asked in the previous year in the questionnaire for the students to evaluate them. For the actual study, I used the questions that I collected from the transcriptions of 15 hours of lesson recordings, which amounted to 3 week-long lessons of one class. 3.7. Data Collection Process I collected all data for this study during the second term of the 2020-2021 education year for 6 weeks. To collect data, first of all, I applied for the institute and the university’s ethics committee for their grant of necessary permission for the research in general and its data collection tools specifically (Appendix 6). Following their approval, I informed the parents of the students in my classes about the aim of my study and both of the data collection processes. To inform the parents of the processes in detail, I organized both face-to-face and online parents’ meetings. Then, I shared the consent form for the parents who gave approval for their children to participate in my study (Appendix 3). I thus took their written permissions by means of this form. Finally, I was granted permission from the provincial directorate of National Education of İstanbul to conduct this research in my institution with my own students (Appendix 7). Before collecting the actual data to be used in this study, 20 students in another 6th grade class in the same school agreed to fill out the questionnaire I designed initially. This data collection process was part of the pilot study. With the answers obtained from these students, I revised the questions in the questionnaire to make sure the actual participants of the study understood the questions better and replied to them with ease. The first step of the actual data collection process included the audio and video recordings of the lessons. Before I started recording our lessons, I informed my students of the fact that they were being recorded for a research study which was exploring my teaching practices in general and had an aim to improve our classroom practices. However, I did not specify that I was exploring my own questioning practices so as not to distort my students’ views of my questions and make a change in their usual behaviours of answering my questions. Informing the participants of a study at a minimum level is suggested to be done in order to avoid participant bias (Dörnyei, 2007). 62 Thus, I recorded our lessons throughout 6 weeks in total. I did not include data I collected at the first week in the actual data and analysis, thus, I considered them as data of the pilot study. I collected 60 hours of online lessons in each class through the audio and video recording feature of Zoom in each week for 6 weeks. Each lesson lasted for about 30 minutes, thus, I collected a total of 60 online lessons lasting for approximately 1800 minutes. However, as mentioned above, I included only 50 of them in the actual data analysis, so, the whole data amounted to approximately 1500 minutes-long recordings. I recorded the lessons during the first four weeks and the last two weeks consecutively and during these two recording periods, there was a week of a religious holiday in Turkey. We did not have any lessons this week because of this holiday, therefore, I could not record any lessons during that short period. During the process of the first phase of data collection, I started transcribing data to include my questions in the student questionnaire. I could transcribe 15 lessons for that, which made up 450 lessons hours and identified the teacher questions in them. Then, I selected 10 different questions of two types- display and referential, out of all the teacher questions and added them to the student questionnaire. Once the 6-week long recording ended, I informed the students of that. I also gave more detailed information of the purposes of my study, that I was exploring my questioning practices, since the recording sessions ended. Then, I told my students that they could fill in the questionnaire if they wished to do so. I initially organized two Zoom meetings separately for both classes and invited the volunteer students to join in order to fill out the questionnaire. I presented the questionnaire via Google Forms during those meetings and waited for my students to fill in. Meanwhile, they asked me about the points they could not understand in the items of the questionnaire, and I clarified those issues for them. For the students who did not join those Zoom meetings, I shared the Google Form link of the questionnaire to them via our class WhatsApp groups. Since their parents were in those groups, they were informed of the content of the questionnaire as well. Then, the other volunteer students filled in the questionnaire. Thus, a total of 33 students, 18 from Class A and 15 from Class B, took part in the second phase of the data collection process by filling in the questionnaire. 3.8. Data Analysis The first part of data, the lesson recordings, includes the full transcriptions of them. In order to extract the transcriptions of these recordings, I made use of the transcription symbols and codes offered by Jefferson (2004) (Appendix 8). Due to the fact that the aim of this study is to find out some aspects of the teacher questions, I transcribed the students’ answers as well since they were useful to see the contexts I asked questions in. However, I did not include them 63 in the data analysis part. Since I only aimed to explore the questions I asked in English, I did not include the questions I asked in my students’ mother tongue, i.e., Turkish, in the analysis. Moreover, I did not include the questions that were in the books I used as the lesson materials since I did not form those questions myself, and I also did not include the questions I repeated right after asking the initial one. Following the transcription process, I started identifying my questions out of all the utterances that I found in my talk. In order to decide which sentences and structures in the teacher talk I should consider as questions, I referred to the opinions and explanations of scholars about the identification of teacher questions. According to this, I identified the questions in terms of whether I had the intention of getting an answer out of them, regardless of the wait time and their grammatical structures (Tsui, 1992; Ur, 1996; Wu, 1993). Then, I checked each utterance, reread the transcriptions, and watched the recordings several times to make sure whether I intended a specific utterance as a question or not. Thus, my intention regarding whether I meant to ask a question or not was the basis of the identification of teacher questions. I did not identify rhetorical questions such as; “Why? Because...” and some other utterances (Huh?, Yes?) as questions. I thus selected the teacher questions out of the teacher talk, put them into a different file, and counted the frequency of questions found in each lesson. Therefore, I had a collection of all of the questions I asked in English in each lesson transcription. Next, I categorized them by using a framework which encompassed two different categorizations of questions regarding their types and functions. However, while categorizing the questions, I kept referring to the full transcriptions and video recording of my lessons to fully grasp the context I asked them in and my intention behind asking them. In terms of the types of questions, I made use of the framework that I adapted from the works of Long and Sato (1983) and Todd (1997). As for the functions of my questions, I utilized Richards and Lockhart’s (1996) framework with no adaptations. Both of them are shown in Table 13 below in combination with each other. Most of the classifications of question types belong to Long and Sato, which are echoic and epistemic as main categories. Under echoic type, there are three questions: comprehension check, clarification request, and confirmation check and under epistemic type, there are four questions: display, low-order referential, higher referential, and requests. The last three question types are the newly added ones. 64 Table 13 The framework I used for the analysis of my questions Functions Procedural Convergent Divergent Types Echoic questions Epistemic questions Subtypes  Comprehension  Display:  Higher referential: checks: What is the meaning What can you do to Did you understand? of this word? protect wildlife?  Clarification  Lower referential: requests: Do you like riding on Can you explain rollercoasters? more of it?  Requests:  Confirmation Could you please checks: speak louder? Did you mean that? After a careful review of the literature, I decided to use the framework presented in Table 13. The reason was that it was the best one to fit the purposes of this study, which I found out by conducting a prior analysis before the actual analysis process. This prior analysis of data is referred to as the pilot phase of the actual analysis of data and it is an essential and time- saving process to test out whether the data instrument for the analysis will work out for your data or not (Schreier, 2012). As for the adaptations, I was inspired by Todd’s (1997) classification of questions into two types as low-order and high-order. I thus decided to combine these types with referential questions and came up with lower referential and higher referential questions. This identification and distinction seemed to be necessary in order to find out which questions served to improve the critical thinking skills of my students, as this was one of the research questions in this study. Moreover, the prior analysis of my questions showed me that I made use of a lot of questions in the form of requests, as Altun (2010) did so in her study, and therefore added this type in the framework, too. Since I aimed to explore the types and the functions of my questions along with the frequency of the critical thinking questions, the frameworks for their analysis needed to be interrelated with each other. Richards and Lockhart’s (1996) categorization of questions into these three types; procedural, convergent, and divergent, were cut out for the aims of this study. As can be understood from Table 13, all types of echoic questions serve the purposes of 65 procedural questions, three types of epistemic questions are matched with convergent questions, and higher referential questions are in line with divergent questions. However, the analysis of types and functions of teacher questions of this study revealed that some of the subtypes of questions were not in line with these specified functions. For instance, not all epistemic questions fell under the convergent and divergent functions, instead some of them were placed under echoic questions. I will mention the details of the analysis with examples in the findings section. Though I exemplified these question types and functions briefly in Tables 9 and 10 in Subchapter 2.5.3., I will explain more of them here. To start with two main question types, echoic questions, as the name stands for, kind of echo whatever has been said either by the addresser or the addressee in the same form or with different wordings. In the classroom context, comprehension checks are asked to make sure the student has understood what the teacher has said or taught as a content, clarification requests are used to call for another wording from students regarding what they have said, and confirmation checks are asked to make sure the teacher has understood what students have said. As for epistemic questions, they require some type of knowledge-based answers either that of facts or opinions. Display questions mostly call for fact-based responses and the teacher asks these questions while already knowing the answer and just to make sure students know as well. On the contrary, when asking referential questions, the teacher does not know the answer or them, since these can only be answered with students’ experience, opinions, or preferences. The lower and higher referential questions distinguish from each other in the type of possible answers given to them and the cognitive level activated by them. While lower referential questions only call for close-ended or answers with limited variety, higher referential questions allow open-ended and a variety of answers. Moreover, students contemplate further either by making analysis, evaluation, or synthesis to be able to give proper responses to these questions. At last, requests are the type of questions through which the teacher wishes something to be performed, mostly occurring questions asked for classroom management issues. In relation to echoic questions, procedural question types serve the functions of controlling the class, leading the activities, or giving instructions. Convergent questions have the goal of getting quick and short fact or opinion-based replies from learners without needing any further thinking. However, divergent questions are directed with the opposite purposes, to enhance learners’ higher-order thinking skills and get them to reply to questions with relatively longer structures. 66 While I analysed the data by identifying the questions into types and functions, another colleague of mine and M.A. student of ELT who had experience in both teaching and coding of questions conducted the analysis of data by using the same framework as I did (Table 13). I provided the other rater with the 25% of my data, which amounted to 401 questions in total. I collected these questions in ten lessons that I equally chose from both classes. Before she started analysing data, I provided her with the necessary explanations of the types and functions of questions and the framework she would use for analysis. I also sent her the full transcriptions of the lessons the questions of which she would analyse so that she could have a full grasp of the context in which I asked these questions. I used this procedure to ensure the interrater reliability. After we both completed our analysis of questions, I calculated the agreement rate using percent agreement method. The correlation between my and my colleague’s coding process amounted to 78%. Although some sources state that the minimum agreement ratio should be 80%, other sources suggest that for complex coding instruments, 70% agreement is sufficient (Hartmann, Barrios & Wood, 2004; Shweta, Bajpai & Chaturvedi, 2015) We, as the researcher and interrater, also discussed the conflicting issues in our analysis. Thus, we aimed to resolve the discrepancies that we noticed in our identification processes of the types and functions of my questions and tried to find a common ground in our analyses. This process helped me to review the rest of my analysis which amounted to 75% of my data. As for the second part of data, the student questionnaires, I did a descriptive analysis of the answers that my students gave to open-ended questions. First of all, I collected all of the answers given by each student to each question. Then, I analysed their answers using content analysis. Referring to it as a method used in qualitative studies, Schreier (2012) defines content analysis as a way of unearthing meanings and codes emerging from data of the study in a systematic way. Although this method is mostly used while analysing transcribed interviews or lesson recordings, it is also used in data collection methods such as field notes, diaries, or questionnaires with open-ended questionnaires. This method leads the researcher to come up with recurring words, topics, or themes throughout data and establish the connection between these items by coding them. Therefore, while conducting a content analysis of the questionnaire, several codes and themes emerged, and I categorized the students’ answers under these themes. There was one question asked on a 3-point Likert scale in the questionnaire, and I carried out descriptive analysis for this single question by calculating the frequency and means of the answers and putting them in a table. Although it is not an extremely frequent practice to work with numbers in qualitative studies, sometimes quantitative analysis techniques such as the one above can be utilized if needed (Wragg, 1999). 67 3.9. Reliability and Validity Issues As opposed to the frequent use of statistical figures and ratios in quantitative studies, qualitative studies make use of different ways to ascertain whether the data collection instruments, and the data analysis processes are sufficiently reliable and valid. However, this differentiation does not render qualitative studies less reliable and valid. Reliability and validity issues in such studies are also explained by using other terms such as credibility, dependability, and transferability (Mackey & Gass, 2022). Furthermore, Miles et al. (2018) make use of some more terms corresponding with each other and being used interchangeably in both quantitative and qualitative research as follows: “(1) the objectivity/confirmability of qualitative work, (2) reliability/dependability/auditability, (3) internal validity/credibility/authenticity, (4) external validity/transferability/fittingness, and (5) utilization/application/action orientation.” (p. 311, 2014). As for what I did in this particular study to ensure the reliability and validity of data, I took some steps while developing the students’ questionnaire. I did a pilot study for the questionnaire by requesting a group of participants with similar features with the actual participants of my study in terms of their language learning settings such as age, grade, materials they used, and the number of English lessons they had per week. The pilot study is a rehearsal of the application of data instruments and data collection process in order to test and find out the applicability of these aspects in the original research setting (Mackey & Gass, 2022). Implementing this procedure is essential in the exploration of dimensions of CI (Wragg, 1999). Therefore, implementing it helped me to presume whether my students would understand and thus answer the items of the questionnaire. The following step I took upon revising the questionnaire with the results of the pilot study was to consult experts of their opinions of its revised version. I then consulted three experts and asked them to review the items of the questionnaire according to the criteria of content and face validity (Appendix 4 and 5). Content validity refers to the fact that the data collection tool should be good enough to represent what is aimed to be researched and one of the ways to ensure this type of validity is to have an expert review that tool (Schreier, 2012). In addition to this, face validity is required to see the coherence between the items of the instrument. Therefore, in my case, I ensured both types of validity by means having expert opinions, calculating the correlation of experts’ ratings of the questionnaire items, and revising these items accordingly. Another procedure I completed related to the reliability of data analysis was interrater reliability. This process is referred to as a technique applied to measure reliability of the data 68 analysis process during which raters other than that or those of the original work do the analysis of the data with the same coding schemes. It is a significant measurement technique in that it represents whether the analysis of raters reach an agreement on the data analysis. If the agreement rate between the raters is low, it signifies unreliable data, which puts a risk to both data instrument and the raters’ coding processes (Dikilitaş & Griffiths, 2017). In my case, a colleague of mine completed the analysis with 25% of my data I presented to her, and the agreement rate was 78%, which was deemed acceptable for multiple scholars (Hartmann et al., 2004; Shweta et al., 2015). 3.10. The Role of the Researcher The researcher is deemed as one of the most essential research instruments in qualitative studies in the sense that they bring along their personal beliefs, insights, and presuppositions each of which contributing a great deal to the process (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). In this regard, I will evaluate the presumptions I have concerning the aspects I may have brought along to this research. Prior to this, I will briefly touch upon my prior experiences leading me to carry out this research. When I applied for graduate studies in ELT, I was already a full-time working teacher with four years of experience at various state secondary and high schools. In some of the courses I took during my M. A. study, I had requirements to conduct research studies by collecting empirical data. While I was pondering upon what kind of research studies I could carry out and the details of them such as with whom and in which setting, the idea of making use of my teaching environment as the context of my study struck me. It was both because collecting data from there would be the most convenient way for me and I also had some ideas about testing out the techniques I used in my classes to explore their effectiveness. In light of this, I conducted three small-scale research studies as some of the course requirements as a novice researcher. The two of them were experimental research and one of them was an exploratory research study. In the latter one, I explored some aspects of CI from data I collected in online lessons I had with my 5th grade students. The data collection process coincided with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in the 2019-2020 spring term, where I experienced the online teaching process the first time. The CI aspects I explored were: setting up participation, teacher questions, teacher feedback, and teacher’s use of L1. Exploration of the aspects increased my awareness of the teacher talk in general and specifically teacher questions, and this previous research experience aroused my curiosity and inspired me to conduct a larger scale classroom research, which turned out as my thesis study. 69 A year later, the 5th graders who participated in my previous small-scale study became a part of this present study, as the 6th graders and another class also joined the process the students of which I had not taught beforehand. Since I started collecting data in the 2020-2021 spring term, by the time I chose them as the participants, I had already taught them to see whether these two groups had similar characteristics to be included in the research. Besides, I was working at that secondary school for already two and a half years; one and a half years face-to-face and one year online, to get a grasp of students’ levels, performances, and their attitudes towards English. These and other information helped me make a sound decision in choosing these particular two groups for my study. In addition to this, having conducted a similar study before this one gave me a lot of insights and experiences which enabled me to plan out a better research design. These experiences enlightened me to become more reflective and critical throughout the research process and assisted me in meeting the needs of action research. Consequently, my active role as a teacher, researcher, and an insider enabled to make such contributions to this research. However, this practice of taking a critical and reflective stance planted a seed of reservation in me, that it may distort my data and have researcher bias. Since I aimed to explore the dimensions of the questions I asked in my classes, being mindful of them could lead them to change, in other words, I could change my questioning practices knowing that I explored them meanwhile. With this in mind, I tried my best to avoid this kind of distortion. So, I tried not to plan the questions I would ask in the lessons beforehand, more than I usually did in the preparation of my lessons, especially by taking my research questions into consideration. To specify, I tried to adopt a natural process while applying my questioning practices in my classes. I thus did what I usually did by looking at the materials I would use in class and the content I would teach beforehand. However, I did not attempt to increase neither the variety of the types and functions of my questions by nor the frequency of the critical thinking questions. I also did not reflect upon my questioning practices meanwhile the data collection process and left that stage of action research cycle to the data analysis part. 3.11. Conclusion So far, I provided the details about the components of the research, along with explanations about the nature of data collection instruments and analysis from a qualitative perspective. In the next chapter, I will report the findings of my study in light of the research questions I posed. 70 CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS 4.1. Introduction The present study yielded two types of data: lesson recordings and student questionnaire. I analysed data that I obtained from the lesson recordings, which are the questions I asked in those lessons, by identifying them in terms of their frequency, types, and functions. I will present each of these aspects of questions descriptively along with tables and I will provide extracts from the transcriptions in separate subchapters. After that, I will present the analysis of the student questionnaire. I will report all of these data with detailed descriptions and tables. 4.2. What Is the Frequency of Each Question I Ask in 6th Grade EFL Classes? This analysis answers the first research question of the study: “What is the frequency of each question I ask in 6th grade EFL classes?”. I did this analysis by looking at each of the 50 recorded lessons’ transcription and identifying my questions in them. However, before that, I needed to decide on which utterances I would consider as questions or not, not just for frequency but also for the analysis of the types and functions of questions. I explained my decision-making processes regarding the identification of my questions in detail in Subchapter 3.8. Once I completed the identification process, I calculated the frequency of the teacher questions, as presented in Table 14. Table 14 The frequency of my questions Lessons Weeks 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Total f f f f f f A 2nd 35 28 28 42 32 165 A 3rd 33 31 32 34 23 153 A 4th 55 31 28 28 45 187 A 5th 34 54 36 30 36 190 A 6th 37 35 41 67 28 208 B 2nd 29 19 47 21 21 137 B 3rd 24 29 35 16 14 118 B 4th 48 28 19 19 32 146 B 5th 36 22 24 30 26 138 B 6th 16 25 42 41 22 146 71 The total number of questions I asked during a 5-week period of 50 lesson hours was 1588. Since the 1st week of the study was part of the pilot study, the actual data started from the 2nd week and ended at the 6th week as stated in the table above. 1588 questions equalled to an average of 31-32 questions per lesson. However, except for 4 lessons out of 50, the actual numbers varied since I asked either more or a smaller number of questions than the average number in the rest of the 46 lessons. The total number of questions I asked in both classes during this period was as such: 903 questions in Class A and 685 questions in Class B. In the lessons I had with Class A, the number of questions in 7 of them was below the average number, 4 of them were on average, the number of questions in 19 lessons was below average and in 6 lessons the number of questions was above average. When I compared the frequencies of questions I asked within each week in each class as shown in Table 14, I could see that I asked at least 23 questions (3rd week, 5th lesson) and at most 67 questions (6th week, 4th lesson) in a single lesson in Class A. As for the questions I asked within a whole week, there were at least 153 questions (3rd week) and at most 208 questions (6th week) again in Class A. On the other hand, in Class B, the least number of questions I asked was 14 (3rd week, 5th lesson) and the greatest number of questions was 48 (4th week, 1st lesson). In terms of the questions I asked within a whole week, the smallest number of questions turned out to be 118 (3rd week) and the most number of questions was 146 (4th and 6th weeks). I specifically made these numbers bold in the table above to differentiate them from the others. Surprisingly, even the maximum number of questions I asked in Class B, 146, was smaller than that of the minimum number of questions I asked in Class A, 153. So, I asked more questions in Class A than I did in Class B. 4.3. What Are the Types of the Questions I Ask in 6th Grade EFL Classes? This analysis gave the answer to the second research question of the study: “What are the types of the questions I ask in 6th grade EFL classes?”. It also provided the answer to the fourth research question: “What is the frequency of the questions I ask in 6th grade EFL classes that enhance the critical thinking skills of the students?” To identify the types of my questions, I used multiple frameworks and adapted them. One of the frameworks I drew on was Long and Sato’s (1983), in which they classified questions into these following types: comprehension checks, clarification requests, confirmation checks, display, and referential. Another framework I used was developed by Todd (1997). He came up with two different question types: low-order and high-order. I combined these two types with referential questions and came up with lower referential and higher referential questions. Besides, I added another type: requests. The rationale behind of my preference of these frameworks was because they were comprehensive 72 and compiled with the goals of this research. Moreover, all of the question types stated in these two frameworks had a correspondence with the framework I decided to use to identify the functions of questions. Regarding the functions of my questions, I used Richards and Lockhart’s (1996) framework which consisted of procedural, convergent, and divergent questions. In addition to these, in the scope of procedural function, another subfunction emerged, and I labelled it as ‘procedural+social’. I came up with this particular function to be able to identify the functions of questions I asked during the conversations I had with my students to socialize with each other. Although these conversations were out of the lesson context, they still took place within the lesson hours. So, I did not exclude these questions, instead, I identified them as serving ‘procedural+social’ function. Thus, I decided to use all of these functions upon conducting a prior analysis of the questions in data to see whether I could find the correspondence of these types with my questions, and whether I needed an extra type for unidentified questions. As a result, I came up with the framework in Table 15. As can be observed in this framework, some functions stand right above some of the subtypes of questions. This implied that these functions embodied these subtypes above them. However, I did not draw lines to imply that these functions may actually cover any of the subtypes, thus, the subtypes are not strictly limited to serving solely one prescribed function. Table 15 The framework I used for the analysis of my questions Functions Procedural Convergent Divergent Types Echoic questions Epistemic questions Subtypes  Comprehension  Display:  Higher referential: checks: What is the meaning What can you do to Did you understand? of this word? protect wildlife?  Clarification  Lower referential: requests: Do you like riding on Can you explain rollercoasters? more of it?  Requests:  Confirmation Could you please checks: speak louder? Did you mean that? 73 In terms of the types of questions I asked in two of my classes, the analysis revealed that epistemic questions outnumbered echoic questions. Of the four epistemic questions, display questions turned out to be the most prevalent, followed by lower referential, requests, and higher referential questions. Of the three echoic question types, confirmation checks were the most frequently observed, followed by comprehension checks, and clarification requests. When I listed all the seven types of questions in descending order, the finding was as follows: 1. display (34,38%), 2. lower referential (29,28%), 3. confirmation checks (13,97%), 4. requests (12,15%), 5. comprehension checks (5,79%), 6. clarification requests (3,65%), 7. higher referential (0,75%). Thus, display questions were the most frequent type of question which I asked to get some type of information from my students. On the contrary, the least frequent question type that I utilized was higher referential questions. The infrequency of these questions indicated that I hardly ever made use of questions that could enhance the critical thinking skills of my students. Table 16 The frequency of the types of my questions in total Question Types f f f f f f f A 2 6 32 11 37 55 0 24 165 A 3 10 16 12 40 46 4 25 153 A 4 12 22 11 84 38 0 20 187 A 5 13 32 13 60 55 2 15 190 A 6 5 37 15 55 76 2 18 208 TOTAL 46 139 62 276 270 8 102 903 B 2 2 25 4 44 45 0 17 137 B 3 2 16 5 35 32 0 28 118 B 4 2 15 7 70 38 0 14 146 B 5 3 12 10 63 34 3 13 138 Class Week CLAR ECHO CONF ECHO COMP ECHO DISP EPIS LOWER EPIS HIGHER EPIS REQ EPIS TOTAL 74 B 6 3 15 4 58 46 1 19 146 TOTAL 12 83 30 270 195 4 91 685 TOTAL 58 222 92 546 465 12 193 1588 RATIO 3,65% 13,97% 5,79% 34,38% 29,28% 0,75% 12,15% 100% ECHO (Echoic questions): EPIS (Epistemic questions): 1588 372 (23,42%) 1216 (76,57%) Considering the contexts in which I asked these questions, I provided some specific extracts of each question type I collected from the transcriptions of the lessons. I wrote the types and functions of the questions in italics and in parentheses as such: “T: Display, F: Convergent”. I also added the translations of some Turkish utterances into English in parentheses and underlined them. Besides, I assigned numbers such as ‘S1: Student 1’ and pseudonyms instead of the real names of my students to keep their anonymity. Henceforth, I will present the subtypes of echoic questions together because I asked some of them subsequent to each other. 4.3.1. Echoic Questions: These questions are used in the instances where negation of meaning is required. They are not used to get information from the addressee, they are thus asked either for clarification, confirmation, or comprehension of whatever has been discussed by interlocutors. 4.3.1.1. Clarification Requests and Confirmation Checks: Clarification requests are asked to understand better and clearly what was said by the addressee. Confirmation checks are asked by the addresser to ensure whether he/she comprehended correctly what the addressee said beforehand. Extract 2 Class A 2nd week 1st lesson S16: In ( ) question, my answer understanding hungry people and more time. T: Huh, huh. S16: And two question, hungry and happy, sad, hmm, little angry. T: Can you say one more time? (T: Clarification request, F: Procedural) understanding hungry people and S16: More time. T: More time. Did you say more time? (T: Confirmation check, F: Procedural) 75 S16: Yes. T: Okay. As can be seen in Extract 2, this question aimed to clarify what the student said earlier. However, it appeared that I did not ask these questions, because I did not comprehend what she said, but I asked them because I did not hear her clearly. Following this question, I asked a confirmation check question after two turns to make sure I understood what she said correctly. Extract 3 Class A 4th week 5th lesson S16: We can do-, err, tomorrow we can do a Saturday game. But we can do it in not tomorrow. Tomorrow later Saturday we can do it game. T: Tomorrow later Saturday. What does it mean? (T: Clarification request, F: Procedural + social) Does it mean Sunday? (T: Confirmation check, F: Procedural + social) In these two turns above, I asked two echoic questions to the same student about an out of content talk we had at the end of the lesson. She did not give a reply, so, I added only two turns. In one of the questions, I wanted to understand her better by asking a clarification question and in the other, I wanted to confirm whether I comprehended her correctly. Extract 4 Class A 3rd week 1st lesson T: Huh huh. Err, did you read the first book Demir? (T: Lower referential, F: Convergent) S13: No. I watch ( ). T: No, you said that you watch-you, you read one book. S13: Huh, the (five or six) T: Was it the first book? (T: Lower referential, F: Convergent) S13: No, no seven. Six or seven, seven diye hatırlıyorum. (I remember as) T: Really? (T: Confirmation check, F: Procedural) You started from seventh book? (T: confirmation check, F: procedural) S13: G- galiba 5.yi okumuştum ya. (I guess I read the 5th one.) As shown in Extract 4, we were talking about Harry Potter books, and I asked some questions about them. However, I listed the first two just to present the context I asked those questions, so, I wanted to emphasize only the last two questions. The last two questions were both confirmation checks and I asked them because I was surprised by the fact that he started reading the last book of a book series consisting of seven books and wished to affirm whether it was the case or not. As presented in Extract 5, I asked a question with a similar function, to ensure that the meaning I understood was in line with what the student intended to say. Although 76 I identified these two questions, “Really?” and “Right?”, as other question types as well depending on the purposes they served, the majority of them were confirmation checks. Extract 5 Class A 5th week 3rd lesson S20: Err, the heat in the atmosphere increases because of the global warming. True, I think. T: True, you think, hmm. But you're not sure, right? (T: Confirmation check, F: Procedural) S20: Yes. 4.3.1.2. Comprehension Checks: These are the questions asked to ensure the comprehension of the addressers of the issue at hand. In classroom context, teachers ask this type of questions to make sure the students comprehended what they taught in terms of content or understood the instructions they gave. A lot of comprehension check questions were constituted by “Okay?” questions. As shown in Extracts 6, 7, and 8, I asked all of them to ensure the comprehension of the students of what I told them. However, their contexts and functions varied from each other. In Extract 6, the question I asked was content-related, therefore, it was to ensure the student’s understanding of the preposition use. In Extract 7, I asked this question to make sure the students could follow my instruction. As for the question I asked in Extract 8, I had the purpose of reminding a classroom rule to the student. Extract 6 Class B 5th week 1st lesson S15: What does it mean Hong Konglu in English? Hong Konglu? T: From Hong Kong. There is no word for “Hong Konglu”, but there's a word from Hong Kong. ((laughs)) S29: Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong. T: From, you can add from. Okay? (T: Comprehension check, F: Procedural) Extract 7 Class B 5th week 3rd lesson T: You can start the next activity. Activity 15b. “Read the text again and choose the right photo for the question.” ((reads the book instruction)) Okay? (T: Comprehension check, F: Procedural) This is a very short and easy activity. I will give you one minute for it. Extract 8 Class B 5th week 3rd lesson S1: Öğretmenim alttaki sorulara niye yaklaştırmıyorsunuz? (Teacher, why don’t you zoom into the questions below?) 77 T: Yukarıdakileri belki yazamayan vardır diye, yazsınlar diye. (Maybe there are some students who couldn’t write, so that they write.) By the way, please, please, please don't forget to say: “Can I speak Turkish?” before you speak. Okay? (T: Comprehension check, F: Procedural) Table 17 Examples of echoic questions in my lessons Clarification Requests Confirmation Checks Comprehension Checks Can you say one more Really? Okay? time? Right? Are you sure? What did you say? Can you hear me/it? Can you understand? …what? Can you see? Do you understand? What does it mean? Do you mean…? Do you know what I What do you mean? Did you say…? mean? Sorry? Did I hear correctly? What did you Did you hear me? understand? Did I understand Right? correctly? Did you ask that? Are you talking about…? Are you sure? 4.3.2. Epistemic Questions: This question type represents four other questions which are asked to get either a knowledge-based answer from the addressee (display, lower referential, and higher referential) or to make them perform some type of action, such as answering the question or doing a task (requests). 4.3.2.1. Display Questions: This question type is used to get an answer from the addressee which the addresser already knows the answer. Thus, in classroom context, teachers’ purpose of asking such questions is not to learn something new but to check whether the students know the answer of it or not. Consisting of 34,38% of all of the questions I asked in 50 lessons, display questions (f= 546) became the most prevalent question type. Although display questions were high in number, they mostly served similar functions and were in similar grammatical forms. My identification of their functions revealed that asking for the meaning of words and asking for the translation of sentences were two of the most frequently used functions of them (Extracts 9 78 and 10). Another frequently occurring function I used by means of display questions was to get extra information related to the materials we used in class, be it a text, coursebook, or a video (Extract 11). Besides, I asked a lot of questions that I formed out of the materials I used. In other words, there were pre-existing questions in the materials, mostly in the coursebook, so, I changed the grammatical form of the question to get the same answer from the students (Extract 12). As mentioned earlier, I only included these material-inspired questions in the data, hence, I excluded the original questions that I asked directly from the material while calculating the frequencies of my questions. Apart from these, in terms of the grammatical form of the display questions, although I asked both wh- questions by using the majority of wh- word and yes/no questions as well, the former outnumbered the latter. Extract 9 Class A 6th week 5th lesson: Asking a meaning of a word T: In fairy tales, you can see this expression a lot once upon a time. What does it mean? (T: Display question, F: Convergent) Do you know? (T: Display question, F: Convergent) Once upon a time. S17: Can I say? T: Yeah, you can Damla. S17: Err, actually they are write, err, evvel zaman önce. T: Huh huh. Okay. Extract 10 Class A 4th week 5th lesson: Asking the translation of a sentence T: Okay, now let's continue “The Little Prince on Earth”. Be careful when we are saying, err, on Moon, on Sun, on Earth, we use on and so he goes to the Earth. But because we say go to we use to. He goes to the Earth. In the Earth, he sees a man. “What are you doing?” The man: “I'm cutting down the trees to make a building there.” He is doing something bad. He's cutting down the trees. And the Little Prince says: “Isn't this tree a bird's house?” What does he say in Turkish? (T: Display question, F: Convergent) S20: Can I say? T: “Isn't this tree a bird's house?” S20: Can I say teacher? T: Huh huh. Yes, you can. S20: Bu ağaçta kuş yuvası yok mu? (Isn’t there a bird’s house in this tree?) T: Or bu ağaç kuşların yuvası değil mi? (Isn't this tree birds house?) S20: Yeah. 79 Extract 11 Class B 3rd week 2nd lesson: Text-related question T: Okay, I want to ask you something about Carol, something about Carol. My question is: How did, how did Carol feel when she finished the book? (T: Display question, F: Convergent) But Mustafa please don't say it. S15: I will not say. T: Okay, please think. I will give you, I will ask you two questions and I will give you two minutes to think about it. And...Okay, my question number one: How did Carol feel once she finished the book? (T: Display question, F: Convergent) And number two: How does she want to be? (T: Display question, F: Convergent) Bu sorularım Carol’la alakalı. [Bir düşünün ( ). (These are my questions about Carol. Think about them.) Extract 12 Class B 3rd week 2nd lesson: Book inspired question T: Okay. Um, “Miss Honey was Matilda’s…” (book question) Who? (T: Display question, F: Convergent) Headteacher, mother, teacher, or brother? (T: Display question, F: Convergent) Err, I want to ask Neva. Neva, can you tell me Miss Honey was Matilda’s? (T: Display question, F: Convergent) 4.3.2.2. Lower Referential Questions: As opposed to display questions, the answers of lower referential questions are not known by the addressers. In other words, teachers do not ask these questions to check their students’ knowledge, yet, they ask because they want to learn the answer. The students mostly refer to their past experiences or they express their feelings and opinions while answering these questions. Besides, they do not need to give long answers by using complex grammatical structures while replying these questions. Lower referential questions were the second most frequently types of questions I asked in my classes with a ratio of 29,28%. With regard to the contexts of these questions, some of them were about the content of the lesson (Extract 13), and some of them were related to the out-of-content conversation we had together as a means of socializing (Extract 14). But in both of them, I asked questions to find out the opinions, feelings, or experiences of my students about the topic at hand. In addition to these, I asked some other questions of this type related to the procedural issues to find out their opinions or choices (Extract 15) or to find out some type of information I did not have the knowledge of (Extract 16). Considering the grammatical form of these questions, I asked almost the same number of wh- and yes/no questions. 80 Extract 13 Class B 6th week 3rd lesson: Content-related question T: Max. And the last one. I think you know the answer. Who is going to make a speech or who is going to be a candidate for class president? [Mustafa? (T: Display question, F: Convergent) S15: And I read, and I read this T: Okay. S15: err, paragraph. It's Karl. T: Huh huh. Karl, okay. Aa, Mustafa, do you have a potential to be a candidate for class president too? (T: Lower referential question, F: Convergent) S15: I have a potential teacher. Extract 14 Class A 4th week 1st lesson: Out-of-content questions S20: Hi teacher. T: Hi, welcome and good afternoon. S20: Good afternoon. T: We have 8 minutes to 12 o’clock. But I think it's this afternoon, it's not morning. ((laughs)) S20: Yes. Teacher, today I'm very energetic. T: Great. Ah by the way, what did you do at the weekend on Sunday? (T: Lower referential question, F: Procedural + social) I saw you on Saturday and how about Sunday? (T: Lower referential question, F: Procedural + social) S20: Err, teacher, weather was very good. Extract 15 Class B 5th week 3rd lesson: Procedural questions T: Who wants to read Janet? (T: Lower referential question, F: Procedural) Who wants to read Jeremy? (T: Lower referential question, F: Procedural) S15: I want to read Jeremy. T: Okay. Mustafa wants to reach Jeremy. And? (T: Lower referential question, F: Procedural) S21: I’m Janet. T: Janet okay. Var mı başka okumak isteyen? (Does anyone else want to read?) Yoksa bütün diyaloğu ikisine vereceğim (Or I will give the whole dialogue to two of them.)…No then. Okay, err, then Mustafa, you are reading Jeremy and [(Resul) you are reading Janet. 81 Extract 16 Class A 3rd week 3rd lesson: Procedural questions T: Err, by the way, I have to ask you what was your lesson last lesson? (T: Lower referential question, F: Procedural) S17: Science lesson. T: Science. And how many students were there in the science lesson? (T: Lower referential question, F: Procedural) S11: Fourteen. T: Fourteen, oh! I g- I guess most of your friends are sleeping right now. Okay, so let’s not wait for them, err, let’s start our lesson, Practice Book, page 14, activity 16. Okay, err, do you need time to do the activity? (T: Lower referential question, F: Procedural) S20: Yes. 4.3.2.3. Requests: This question type represents some type of action to be performed by the addressee, in this case, the students. These actions could be related to the participation to the lesson such as answering the questions or completing an activity or they could be related to the classroom procedures, such as opening the lesson material or taking notes. I used requests (f=193) with a ratio of 12,15% and they all served the procedural function. When I used them, I either wanted the students to give some type of an answer to the book question or my question (Extract 21) or I wanted them to do something related to the lesson procedure (Extract 22). Almost all of the requests I directed began with the modal verb “Can”. However, only four of the requests had another grammatical form where I implied the students to do an action. Extract 17 Class B 6th week 4th lesson T: And number four. Mustafa, can you answer the question please? (T: Request, F: procedural) S15: Which one is Pamela’s quiz results? Congra-A: Congratulations! You’re a real environmentally friendly person. What about recycling, recycling pa-plastic, paper and glass first. Extract 18 Class A 4th week 4th lesson S20: Teacher, err, I look my homework, err, I do all homework. But I don't do bonus activities. Err, teacher in bonus activities, I know...the first bonus activity (say) tongue twister 82 T: Meryem, if you're going to say something. Meryem one minute, if you are going to say something long, can you say it in the break? (T: Request, F: Procedural) S20: No teacher, it isn’t long. T: Then, okay. So far, I talked about the findings of two major question types, echoic and epistemic, and subtypes of them. There is one more question type that is part of epistemic questions, which is higher referential questions. I will present the findings related to this specific question type in the following subchapter since it is linked to another research question of this study. 4.4. What Is the Frequency of the Questions I Ask in 6th Grade EFL Classes That Enhance the Critical Thinking Skills of My Students? 4.4.1. Higher Referential Questions: As opposed to lower referential questions, these questions are asked to develop critical thinking skills of the students. When teachers ask such questions to their learners, they expect structurally longer and more complex sentences. This question type was the least frequent one (f=12) that I used in my classes with a ratio of 0,75%. Of these 12 questions, I asked 8 of them in Class A and 4 of them in Class B, which meant that I asked more in the former one. Some of these higher referential questions were out-of-content (Extract 17), and some others were the ones I got inspired from the content (Extract 18). There were also other higher referential questions that I asked to my students as parts of the homework I assigned to them (Extract 19). These questions were also in the transcriptions since I uttered them to explain how my students would answer them. However, since I did not ask these questions within the lessons, I did not include them in the data analysis. I included only one of them (Extract 20) in the frequency count since the student gave an answer in the lesson. Extract 19 Class A 3rd week 3rd lesson: Out-of-content question S20: Yeah. Teacher, I want to learn Indonesian. T: Indonesian, wow! S20: And teacher, I started! T: I remember you told me on Duolingo, you started learning Indonesian, in, in a speaking video you told me that, yes I remember now. And why do you want to learn Indonesian? (T: Higher referential question, F: Procedural + social) S20: Teacher, err, one upon time ((laughs)), my brother, err, look, look it Indonesian. T: Huh huh. 83 S20: And I wonder it and I start to and it’s very, err, enjoyable because, you can learn quickly because, err, the words are (like) English. T: Huh huh. S20: Coffee, kapi,[ tea, tee T: Coffee, kapi] S20: Ice, es. T: Huh huh. S20: And y- yes and, err, there is not verb. Your saying only ben sevmek kahve. T: Hmm, ( ) there is no verb. S20: Like T: I didn’t know that. S20: Yes ( ) Extract 20 Class A 6th week 4th lesson: Content-related question T: Okay then. Okay then. I want to ask you, uh, about the lion king, lion king, because lion is a king in the forest. Is there a democracy, is there a democracy when there's a king, when there's a king? (T: Display question, F: Convergent) For example, lion is a king. Is there a democracy in the forest? (T: Display question, F: Convergent) Damla? S17: No. S20: [Teacher this is Lion King. S17: Monarchy. T: Exactly.] Damla, can you say why? (T: Display question, F: Convergent) Why isn't there a democracy? (T: Higher referential question, F: Divergent) S17: Cause there aren’t hak (right) any people, other the king. Extract 21 Class A 6th week 2nd lesson: Unanswered homework question, not included in the frequency T: … I asked: “What would you promise?” (T: Higher referential question in the homework, F: Divergent) Siz ne vaat edersiniz, ne söz verirsiniz? Bunu sormuştum. Iı, ne söz verirsiniz, nasıl anlatabiliriz. (I asked this, err, “What would you promise?” How can we explain this?) I would, for example, I would, err, be a host and share screen...I would, err, control the screen. I would control the screen. I would send the link. I would send the links like this. You can say like, something like this. And the second question is, suppose that everyone is candidate. Who would you vote for? (T: Higher referential question in the homework, F: Divergent)…Then you will answer the question. What would, what would you want the class president to do? 84 (T: Higher referential question in the homework, F: Divergent) Sınıf başkanının ne yapmasını isterdiniz? Extract 22 Class B 6th week 1st lesson: Answered homework question T: Imagine you are a candidate to be the class president. Yani sınıf başkanlığı için aday olduğunuzu varsayın. What would you promise to your classmates? (T: Higher referential question in the homework but answered, F: Divergent) S29: Teacher, ben şey, söyleyebilir miyim şimdiden? (Teacher, I err, can I say now?) (he continues giving in answer in Turkish after some talk in between) Table 18 below shows the examples of epistemic questions that I collected from the transcriptions of my lessons. Table 18 Examples of epistemic questions in my lessons Display Lower Referential What does it mean? How are you today? Do you know what it means in Turkish? How do you feel? What is the answer? Did you read /watch it? What is the name of (the book)? Did you like it? What is the book/the text about? What is your favourite? What kind of a book and movie is it? Do you need more time? Who are (these people)? Have you finished? What are they talking about? Who wants to read? Can you say/tell me…? Which part do you want to read? What is the opposite of…? Is … here/absent? Do you remember…? Where were you in the last lesson? Why can’t I see you? Higher Referential Requests Why? Can you say? Why not? Can you answer? Why do you say? Can you do it? Why don’t you want? Can you translate? Why do you think so? Can you read? Can you guess why are they different? Can you speak louder? 85 Can you share your screen? Can you write on the chat? Can you close your microphone? 4.5. What Are the Functions of the Questions I Ask in 6th Grade EFL Classes? In this subchapter, I will provide the answer to the third research question of this study, “What are the functions of the questions I ask in 6th grade EFL classes?”. The results showed that I made use of questions that serve procedural purposes the most (f=936, 58,87%). The second most frequent function of my questions was convergent (f=642, 40,49%), and the least frequent was divergent (f=10, 0,62%). Therefore, it can be inferred that I directed questions a lot in order to deal with classroom management and organize the lesson activities by giving instructions. In addition to this, as I was analysing my data, I came up with a subcategory of procedural questions which I named as ‘procedural+social’. Since procedural questions comprise out-of-content conversation that takes place during the lesson, they cover the questions asked for socialization purposes (Wilen, 1987). I discovered that this kind of conversation routine took place quite frequently in my lessons, especially at the beginning and at the end of the lessons. This finding is caused by the fact that since as a class we did not have the chance to meet physically in our school environment due to the pandemic our only chance to socialize was during the online lessons. Due to this, I and my students used some of the lesson periods to fulfil this need. As a result, I calculated the frequency of them (f=116) as well, and it turned out as 7,30% of the total number of questions. However, I did not separate them from the procedural questions, so, I presented this ratio within the ratio of procedural questions, which was 58,87%. To begin with the most predominant function, procedural, it pertains to the questions asked to serve this function which is either related to the organization of the classroom procedures, such as giving instructions about an activity, checking homework, or following classroom routines, such as taking attendance. Besides, this function is related to the classroom management actions such as checking on students to make sure they are following the lesson. Concerning the type of questions that I identified as serving these three functions, they varied a lot. All of the question types had instances of specific questions that served procedural function. Since teacher questions can serve multiple functions depending on the context they are asked and the intention that the teacher has in mind while asking them, this variety of question types regarding functions is not surprising. However, all of the echoic questions, namely, clarification requests, confirmation checks, and comprehension checks, and all 86 requests under the category of epistemic questions served only the procedural function. Thus, echoic questions did not serve any other function. As for the other types, only few display questions (f=23), 4,57% of all this question type served procedural function. On the other hand, 74,62% (f=345) of all lower referential questions were among procedural questions, which is much higher than the former. Moreover, two questions out of twelve (16,66%) of all higher referential questions served this function. As for the convergent questions, they are used for content-related purposes such as content teaching, engaging the students in it, facilitating their comprehension, and developing CI. 96,48% of all display questions (f=523) and 26,45% (f=120) of all lower referential questions had the convergent function. Thus, I used only two of these epistemic question types to ask content-related questions. I asked divergent questions the least. This function is concerned with the questions asked to develop students’ higher-level thinking skills such as analysis, application, synthesis, evaluation, and inference. It is also associated with critical thinking skills. While convergent questions call for short and a limited variety of answers, divergent questions require long answers with a more diverse variety of answers. Thus, even though a convergent question may seem to urge the students into reasoning and further thinking on a matter, if it is a yes/no question, it is not considered a divergent question. As a result, the analysis revealed that all of the questions serving this function belonged to only one question type, which was a higher referential question consisting of ten divergent questions out of twelve in total in this type. Table 19 The frequency of the functions of my questions in total Question Functions f f f f F A 2 116 49 0 165 24 A 3 101 50 2 153 14 A 4 91 96 0 187 11 A 5 113 75 2 190 24 A 6 138 68 2 209 17 TOTAL 559 338 6 903 90 Class Week PRO CONV DIV TOTAL PRO+ SOC 87 B 2 82 55 0 137 4 B 3 80 38 0 118 6 B 4 68 78 0 146 4 B 5 71 64 3 138 5 B 6 76 69 1 146 7 TOTAL 376 305 4 685 26 TOTAL 936 642 10 1588 116 RATIO 58,94% 40,42% 0,62% 100% 7,30% Table 20 The frequency of the types and functions of my questions in each lesson Question Types Question Functions f f f f f f f f f f f f f A 2.1. 1 4 3 10 14 0 3 35 18 17 0 35 4 A 2.2. 2 5 3 2 9 0 7 28 22 6 0 28 6 A 2.3. 2 5 1 3 10 0 7 28 23 5 0 28 5 A 2.4. 1 9 1 17 11 0 3 42 24 18 0 42 0 A 2.5. 0 9 3 5 11 0 4 32 29 3 0 32 9 A 3.1. 3 8 1 9 11 0 1 33 19 14 0 33 2 A 3.2. 4 1 1 15 5 0 5 31 16 15 0 31 0 A 3.3. 0 4 1 2 11 1 13 32 30 2 0 32 6 A 3.4. 1 2 2 11 12 3 3 34 16 16 2 34 1 A 3.5. 2 1 7 3 7 0 3 23 20 3 0 23 5 A 4.1. 1 6 3 33 4 0 8 55 22 33 0 55 3 A 4.2. 2 3 2 13 9 0 2 31 16 15 0 31 1 A 4.3. 4 7 3 7 5 0 2 28 18 10 0 28 1 A 4.4. 1 2 0 15 8 0 2 28 10 18 0 28 1 A 4.5. 4 4 3 16 12 0 6 45 25 20 0 45 5 Class Week CLAR ECHO CONF ECHO COMP ECHO DISP EPIS LOWER EPIS HIGHER EPIS REQ EPIS TOTAL Procedural Convergent Divergent TOTAL Pro+Social 88 A 5.1. 0 7 5 5 16 0 1 34 24 10 0 34 9 A 5.2. 6 9 4 18 14 0 3 54 35 19 0 54 5 A 5.3. 3 6 2 14 5 0 6 36 20 16 0 36 2 A 5.4. 2 2 2 15 5 0 4 30 16 14 0 30 4 A 5.5. 2 8 0 8 15 2 1 36 18 16 2 36 4 A 6.1. 1 7 5 8 11 0 5 37 29 8 0 37 5 A 6.2. 1 6 3 0 23 1 1 35 18 16 1 35 5 A 6.3. 1 4 5 15 14 0 2 41 28 13 0 41 0 A 6.4. 1 17 2 13 26 1 7 67 54 12 1 67 7 A 6.5. 1 3 0 19 2 0 3 28 9 19 0 28 0 B 2.1. 0 4 2 11 6 0 6 29 14 15 0 29 2 B 2.2. 1 6 0 1 5 0 6 19 16 3 0 19 0 B 2.3. 1 9 1 20 15 0 1 47 25 22 0 47 0 B 2.4. 0 4 1 5 10 0 1 21 14 7 0 21 2 B 2.5. 0 2 0 7 9 0 3 21 13 8 0 21 0 B 3.1. 1 1 1 3 9 0 9 24 22 2 0 24 3 B 3.2. 0 4 0 11 6 0 8 29 16 13 0 29 0 B 3.3. 0 6 2 12 10 0 5 35 21 14 0 35 3 B 3.4. 0 1 1 7 4 0 3 16 9 7 0 16 0 B 3.5. 1 4 1 2 3 0 3 14 12 2 0 14 0 B 4.1. 0 3 1 33 9 0 2 48 13 35 0 48 2 B 4.2. 0 2 2 11 9 0 4 28 13 15 0 28 0 B 4.3. 1 5 1 4 4 0 4 19 14 5 0 19 1 B 4.4. 0 2 2 10 5 0 0 19 8 11 0 19 0 B 4.5. 1 3 1 12 11 0 4 32 20 12 0 32 1 B 5.1. 1 5 3 13 8 1 5 36 23 12 1 36 1 B 5.2. 0 2 3 9 6 0 2 22 13 9 0 22 0 B 5.3. 1 0 2 16 5 0 0 24 10 14 0 24 4 B 5.4. 1 2 2 14 9 0 2 30 15 15 0 30 0 B 5.5. 0 3 0 11 6 2 4 26 10 14 2 26 0 B 6.1. 0 1 0 13 1 1 0 16 2 13 1 16 0 B 6.2. 0 2 1 6 10 0 6 25 14 11 0 25 1 B 6.3. 1 7 0 16 12 0 6 42 25 17 0 42 4 89 B 6.4. 2 3 2 8 22 0 4 41 28 13 0 41 2 B 6.5. 0 2 1 15 1 0 3 22 7 15 0 22 0 ECHOIC: 372 EPISTEMIC: 1216 4.6. What Are My Students’ Views of the Questions I Ask in 6th Grade EFL Classes? In this part, I will answer the 5th and the final research question: “What are the students’ preferences of the questions I ask in 6th grade EFL classes?” by presenting the quantitative and qualitative findings from the student questionnaires (Appendix 1 and 2). I will report the findings of each item in the questionnaire in a separate subheading. 4.6.1. Students’ Views About the Easiness and Difficulty of My Questions: In this part of the questionnaire, I listed ten questions and asked my students to rate them in terms to what extent they thought these questions were easy or hard. These questions were the ones I asked to them during the first weeks of the online lessons we had during the data collection process of this study. As shown in Table 21, the first five questions were lower referential questions, and the last five questions were display questions. I did not mention the original names of these question types so as not to confuse my students. Nevertheless, I explained the purposes of these questions to enlighten my students about the differences between the two types. I asked them to rate my questions by saying that: “Below there are some example questions I asked you in the lessons. Rate the questions you consider hard to answer as 1, easy to answer as 2, very easy to answer as 3. Table 21 My questions presented in the student questionnaire Questions Ratings 1. Do you know this book? (1st Type: Questions that ask your opinion about 1 2 3 a subject) 2. Do you like it? (1st Type: Questions that ask your opinion about a subject) 1 2 3 3. Did you read this book? (1st Type: Questions that ask your opinion about 1 2 3 a subject) 4. How do you feel? (1st Type: Questions that ask your opinion about a 1 2 3 subject) 58 222 92 546 465 12 193 1588 936 642 10 1588 116 90 5. What is your favourite book? (1st Type: Questions that ask your opinion 1 2 3 about a subject) 6. What does it mean? (2nd Type: Questions that ask for an answer based on 1 2 3 information) 7. What did you understand? (2nd Type: Questions that ask for an answer 1 2 3 based on information) 8. What kind of a girl is Hermione? (2nd Type: Questions that ask for an 1 2 3 answer based on information) 9. Is he (Harry) hard-working or lazy? (2nd Type: Questions that ask for an 1 2 3 answer based on information) 10. How did Carol feel when she finished the book? (2nd Type: Questions 1 2 3 that ask for an answer based on information) I analysed the answers given to this question quantitatively. Among the questions given in Table 21, the question that my students considered the easiest was the 5th question, whereas the question that my students considered the hardest was the 10th question. The order of all questions from very easy-to-answer to difficult-to-answer according to the students’ opinions was as follows: 5, 3, 4, 1, 2, 7, 6, 8, 9, and 10. The 5th question was considered the most easily answered question by students. Out of 33 of them, 21 stated that this question was very-easy- to-answer, 10 stated that it was easy to answer and 2 stated that it was hard to answer. The 10th question was considered the hardest to answer by the students. Of 33 of them, 11 said that this question was very easy to answer, 14 said that it was easy to answer and 8 said that it was hard to answer. Also, the 8th and 9th questions were considered by students at the same rate of difficulty and of 33 students, 15 of them stated that they were very easy to answer, 10 of them told that they were easy to answer, and 8 of them said that they were hard to answer. All students rated all of my questions, thus, no one left this item of the questionnaire blank. 91 Table 22 My students’ views about the easiness and difficulty of my questions The Easiest Question 5th Question: What is your favourite book? 3rd Question: Did you read this book? 4th Question: How do you feel? 1st Question: Do you know this book? 2nd Question: Do you like it? 7th Question: What did you understand? 6th Question: What does it mean? 8th Question: What kind of a girl is Hermione? 9th Question: Is he (Harry) hard-working or lazy? The Hardest Question 10th Question: How did Carol feel when she finished the book? As indicated in the brackets next to the questions in Table 22, questions between 1-5 of these 10 questions were the ones that asked students about their opinion on a subject, i.e., referential questions. Since these questions did not ask lead the students to do further thinking, they were specifically lower referential questions. Whereas questions between 6-10 were questions that asked students for knowledge-based answers, i.e., display questions. The answers that the students gave to this item of the questionnaire revealed that they found referential questions harder and display questions easier. When I collected all the answers given by my students, I calculated the response rate of these 10 questions, and the results were as such: very- easy-to-answer questions: 49%, easy-to-answer questions: 37%, and hard-to-answer questions: 13%. 4.6.2. Students’ Reasons for the Difficulty of My Questions: I wanted my students to list their reasons concerning the questions they had difficulty in answering by asking such a question: “Why do you think the questions above that you said “hard-to-answer” are hard?”. When I analysed the answers given to this question, I found that out of 33 students, 18 of them (55%) expressed that some questions were difficult for them and explained this with different reasons. 12 of them (36%) reported that they did not consider my questions difficult. 3 of them (9%) did not provide an answer. These percentages were directly related to the previous result, so, it meant that my questions were found hard-to-be-answered in general at a rate of 13%. This 92 percentage did not signify the number of students who answered as such, but, it signified the extent of the difficulty of my questions. When I analysed the reasons my students stated regarding why some of my questions were difficult for them, I identified 4 of them. Some students stated more than one reason, therefore, the number of reasons did not match with the number of students. These reasons were as follows: “I couldn’t understand the questions.” (n=7), “I couldn’t translate the questions.” (n=4), “I do not know the meaning of the word.” (n=4), “I found them hard because I did not know the answer.” (n=3). There were also students (n=4) who expressed reasons other than these 4. Of these other reasons, there were two different explanations given by two different students. One student said that he considered only one question, the 5th question: “What’s your favourite book?” as difficult because he could not decide on his favourite book. Another student said that she could not deem the Harry Potter-related questions, 8th and 9th questions, important. 4.6.3. Students’ Reasons for the Easiness of My Questions: In this item of the questionnaire, I requested my students to state their reasons regarding why they could answer some of my questions very easily than others. I asked such a question to them: “Why do you think the questions above you said very-easy-to-answer are like that?” When I analysed the answers given to this question, I found that of 33 students, only one did not answer this question and the other 32 of them expressed different reasons as to why they considered some questions as very easy to answer. These percentages were directly related to the findings I presented in 4.6.2, which is the fact that my questions, in general, were considered very easy at a rate of 49%. When I analysed the answers, I categorized the reasons into 3 main categories. The 1st reason was: “I know the meaning.” and “I can translate.” (n=18), the 2nd reason was: “I know the answers.” (n=6), and the 3rd reason was: “Questions are easy.” (n=4). Other than these 3 main reasons, I compiled the other reasons that were expressed less under the title of the 4 th reason. These were generally such reasons: “I study.”, “I know the question type.”, “I’m used to the question types.”, “It’s easy to combine the words with the sentences” (n=12). Similar to the findings of the item of the questionnaire in Subchapter 4.6.2., the students stated more than one reason in this item too, that is why the number of reasons did not match with the number of students. Among the answers given in the 4th category, some students gave different answers than the others. One of them said that the reason why these questions were easy for him was that he asked these questions in the online English games he played, and he answered them too when they were asked to him by others. Another student stated that I, as their teacher, usually taught 93 a subject to them and repeated it until they understood and due to that she could remember it. Moreover, another student expressed that he answered the 4th question: “How do you feel?” because he knew the feelings he felt. 4.6.4. Students’ Preferences of My Questions: This item of the questionnaire required the students to express their preferences related to the questions I presented them in Table 21. I wanted my students to classify their preferences into the following: a) Questions I never prefer, b) Questions I prefer less, c) Questions I prefer more, d) Questions I prefer the most. As I did in Subchapter 4.6.1., I analysed the answers to this question quantitatively, too (See Table 23). The final line of Table 23 represented the frequency of the answers given by the students related to their preferences of my questions. The students generally expressed that they preferred the majority of my questions. Fewer students expressed that they never preferred some questions. Although the extent of their preferences varied, each question was preferred by my students. Table 23 The frequency of my students’ answers in terms of their preferences Questions 1st: Do you know this book? (n=1) (n=6) (n=18) (n=17) 2nd: Do you like it? (n=0) (n=6) (n=16) (n=22) 3rd: Did you read this book? (n=0) (n=5) (n=20) (n=17) 4th: How do you feel? (n=1) (n=3) (n=18) (n=21) 5th: What is your favourite book? (n=0) (n=3) (n=17) (n=22) 6th: What does it mean? (n=5) (n=6) (n=14) (n=13) 7th: What did you understand? (n=7) (n=5) (n=13) (n=9) 8th: What kind of a girl is Hermione? (n=8) (n=7) (n=8) (n=10) 9th: Is he (Harry) hard-working or lazy? (n=9) (n=5) (n=8) (n=15) Number of students who never preferred these questions Number of students who preferred these questions less Number of students who preferred these questions more Number of students who preferred these questions the most 94 10th: How did Carol feel when she finished the book? (n=10) (n=5) (n=8) (n=12) Total number of answers (n=41) (n=51) (n=140) (n=158) According to the answers to the following four items: a) Questions I never prefer, b) Questions I prefer less, c) Questions I prefer more, d) Questions I prefer the most:”, the most preferred questions were the 2nd and 5th questions, whereas the least preferred question was the 10th question (See Table 23). When I compared all the answers given by the students to these four items, the result in Table 24 came out. In this case, the 10th question was the least preferred question and the 5th question was the most preferred question. As far as the types of the questions were concerned, questions between 6-10 were display questions and they were preferred less. On the contrary, questions between 1-5 were referential questions and are they were preferred more. It is important to note that some students wrote the same question numbers to more than one item of the questionnaire. Therefore, the number of preferred and non- preferred questions was more than the number of students. Table 24 The order of preference and non-preference of my questions The questions the students either never The questions the students either preferred preferred or preferred less than the others the most or preferred more than the others 10th: How did Carol feel when she finished 5th: What is your favourite book? (n=39) the book? (n=15) 8th: What kind of a girl is Hermione? (n=15) 4th: How do you feel? (n=39) 9th: Is he (Harry) hard-working or lazy? 2nd: Do you like it? (n=38) (n=14) 7th: What did you understand? (n=12) 3rd: Did you read this book? (n=37) 6th: What does it mean? (n=11) 1st: Do you know this book? (n=35) 1st: Do you know this book? (n=7) 6th: What does it mean? (n=27) 2nd: Do you like it? (n=6) 9th: Is he (Harry) hard-working or lazy? (n=23) 3rd: Did you read this book? (n=5) 7th: What did you understand? (n=22) 4th: How do you feel? (n=4) 10th: How did Carol feel when she finished the book? (n=20) 5th: What is your favourite book? (n=3) 8th: What kind of a girl is Hermione? (n=18) 95 4.6.5. Students’ Reasons for Preferring Some of My Questions Less: In this part of the questionnaire, I asked my students to make explanations regarding the fact that they opted for some of my questions less than the others. I directed such a question to them: “Why do you prefer some questions less? Please state your reasons.” 4 students out of 33 did not give any answer to this question and 7 of them stated that there were no questions that they preferred less. I categorized the answers given by the rest of the 22 students under 6 titles. I listed these reasons and the number of students who expressed them in descending order like the following: 1st: “I don’t understand.” (n=7), 2nd: “I find it hard.” (n=7), 3rd: “I do not know the word/words.” (n=2), 4th: “I cannot answer.” (n=1), 5th: “I cannot translate the question.” (n=1). The 6th category (n=5) was related to other reasons that some students mentioned. These reasons were generally as the following: the lack of image in the questions, boring questions, that the students did not like the questions, or they used them less. According to this, the most frequently listed reasons by students to prefer some questions less were because they did not understand the questions and they found them difficult. Among the category of other reasons, one student expressed that the questions he preferred less were the ones he could easily answer, and the questions he preferred more were the ones he could answer very easily. In other words, he based his preferences on the easiness of my questions. Similar to this answer, another student stated that he preferred some questions less because they were too easy for him, and he wanted to be asked different types of questions. 4.6.6. Students’ Reasons for Preferring Some of My Questions More: In this item of the questionnaire, I wanted my students to mention the reasons concerning why they chose some of my questions more than the others. I asked the following question to them: “Why do you prefer some questions more? Please state your reasons.” Among the answers given to this question, 4 students out of 33 did not give any answer to it and 29 of them expressed why they preferred some questions more by stating various reasons. I compiled these 6 reasons under 6 titles. When I listed these reasons in descending order and the frequency of students who mentioned them, the following came out: 2nd: “I know/knew the answer.” (n=9), 5th: “The question is/questions are easy.” (n=6), 1st: “I can understand.” (n=5), 3rd: “It is easy to answer.” and “I can translate.” (n=5), 4th: “I’m interested in (those questions).” and “I love it/them.” (n=3). The other reasons which I titled as the 6th category were generally as follows: “I am used to the question types.”, “We have to know these questions.”, “I use these questions.”, “It improves (my English) to express by making sentences.”, “I like answering the questions.”, “Because they (the questions) are meant for our learning.”, and “The questions are nice and appropriate.” According to this, the most prominent 96 reasons why some questions were preferred by students more were because students knew the answer to these questions, and they considered them easy. 4.6.7. Students’ Views About Whether My Questions Are Easily Understood: The following question I asked to my students was related to their perceptions towards the easiness of comprehending my questions. Compared to the previous items of the questionnaire, in the following three items that I will present in the Subchapters 4.6.7, 4.6.8., and 4.6.9., I did not provide my students with specific examples of the questions I previously asked them in our lessons. However, I requested them to contemplate and review the questions I asked them generally in our other lessons. For this, I asked two questions as follows: “Do you think the English questions I ask in the lessons are easily understood? Why?” This item of the questionnaire consisted of two separate questions. The 1st question, "Do you think the English questions I ask in lessons are easily understood?” was a question with an expected answer of “Yes” or “No”. When I examined the answers of the students, I put them into the following categories: “Yes.”, “Sometimes / Some Questions.”, and “No.” All the students provided answers to this item. The number and proportions of students answering in these three categories, as presented in Table 25, were as follows: “Yes” (n=19), “Sometimes/Some questions” (n=12), “No” (n=2). A second question “Why?” accompanied the first one. I also grouped the answers to the 2nd question into three separate categories. In the reasons that the students expressed in their answers, these three categories emerged: student-related, teacher-related, and question-related. The analysis of students’ responses, as shown in Table 25, indicated that 12 answers were student-related (43%), 10 answers were teacher-related (36%), and 6 answers were question- related (21%). Accordingly, students believed that the reason why my questions were not easily understood by them was most likely due to themselves, in other words, not due to other factors. I listed the different type of explanations my reasons my students stated in Table 26. Table 25 The categorization of answers regarding why my questions were easily understood “Do you think the English questions I ask in the lessons are easily understood? Why?” Answers “Yes.” “Sometimes/Some “No.” Questions.” f 19 12 7 Ratio 57% 36% 6% Answer categories Student-related Teacher-related Question-related 97 f 12 10 6 Ratio 43% 36% 21% Table 26 Different types of answers my students gave regarding why my questions were easily understood Student-related answers Teacher-related answers Question-related answers  “I am good at English  “Because my teacher teaches  “Because it is not lesson.” the lesson well.” hard.”  “I can understand.”  “You both write on the screen  “They are the  “I know the and repeat.” subjects we learned.” pronunciation of the  “If we don’t understand, you  “All of them are very, words in the express with easier words.” very easy.” question.”  “You are asking questions on  “It is easy to answer  “I can translate your our level.” English questions, questions into  “You are speaking fluent and which are just like Turkish.” clear.” Turkish questions.”  "I understand more  “You are explaining to your  “(There are) Nice easily because I love students who don't questions.” learning new words understand in Turkish.” and my mind is  “You are teaching the always open to new subjects in a fun and nice languages.” way.”  “Sometimes there are  “It is taught appropriately. words that I don't (The teacher teaches the know but I can either subject appropriately).” ask you or look up  “Our teacher speaks with the them from the words we know.” translation.”  “Sometimes. Because there  “Sometimes I do not are times that you talk in a understand because complicated way.” there is a word that I do not know.” 98  “Sometimes I explain what I want to say in a different way and it is not understood.” 4.6.8. Students’ Views About Whether My Questions Are Easily Answered: The question I asked in this item of the questionnaire was related to their views about the easiness of answering my questions. For this, I directed such questions to them: “Do you think the English questions I ask in the lessons are easily answered? Why?” Similar to the item I mentioned in Subchapter 4.6.7., two questions accompanied each other likewise. The 1st question: "Do you think the English questions I ask in the lessons are easily answered?” was also a question with an expected answer of “Yes” or “No”. Thus, I also categorized the answers given to this item as “Yes.”, “Sometimes / Some Questions.”, and “No.”. There was only one student who did not answer it. Of the remaining 32 students, the numbers and proportions of students who gave answers in these 3 categories were such: “Yes.” (n=23), “Sometimes/Some questions” (n=7), “No.” (n=2) (Table 27). After analysing answers given to the 1st question, I categorized the answers given to the 2nd question, “Why?” into four categories: student-related, teacher-related, question-related, and classroom-related. When I analysed the students' answers, I found out that 10 answers were student-related (43%), 7 answers were question-related (30%), 4 answers were teacher-related (17%), and 2 answers were classroom-related (9%) (Table 27). This indicated that students most often regarded themselves as the main reason why they could not answer questions easily. I presented the students’ answers to the 2nd question of the item in Table 28. Table 27 The categorization of answers regarding why my questions were easily answered “Do you think the English questions I ask in the lessons are easily answered? Why?” Answers “Yes.” “Sometimes/Some Questions.” “No.” f 23 21 6 Ratio 71% 21% 6% Answer Student-related Teacher-related Question-related Classroom- categories related f 43% 30% 17% 9% Ratio 10 7 4 2 99 Table 28 Different types of answers my students gave regarding why my questions were easily answered Student-related Teacher-related answers Question-related Classroom-related answers answers answers  “I can  “My teacher  “Because it is not  “Because our understand the teaches very well.” difficult.” class has the question.”  “You ask the  “It is easy to potential (to  “I know the questions in a way answer.” answer).” meaning of the we can  “The questions  “Those who words.” understand.” are easy for me.” can speak  “I can guess the  “You teach the  “They are all English can meaning of the subjects very well very, very easy.”, answer.” word from and  “Because they are others’ entertainingly.” comprehensible.”, answers.”  “The teacher asks easy English questions.” Another student replied to this question in a different way by saying: “Always. I can answer these questions and other English things because I am watching English videos, movies, playing English games, chatting with other players in English (with my cousin too and he is in 7th grade) so, we have to get used to English.” The students who gave a reason after answering “Sometimes.” to the 1st question expressed that the reason why the questions could or could not be answered were themselves. They gave such answers: “I can answer what I know because I know its Turkish meaning. But sometimes I have a hard time putting it together in a sentence.", "Because usually there are not words I do not know in the questions. But sometimes when there are words I don't know in the question, I can guess the meaning of the word from the others’ answers.", 100 “It can be answered because it is a unit that we understand even a little bit.", "I can answer those that I know their meaning, but I can't answer those that I do not know their meaning.", "If there are verbs that I know, I can answer.” Finally, a student who answered as “No.” stated that my questions were usually not answered and that was because they, as students, did not know the Turkish meanings of the questions. 4.6.9. Students’ Suggestions About My Questions: In the final item of the questionnaire, I asked my students to express their opinions and suggestions on questions they would like me to ask in our future lessons. For this, I asked the following questions: “What kind of questions would you like me to ask? Can you give an example?” There were also two questions here. In the 1st question, 19 students out of 33 suggested being asked different questions and they gave explanations and examples according to themselves. 8 students stated that the questions I asked were nice and that I could continue asking the same questions. 4 of them did not respond, 2 of them expressed that it did not matter for them, and 1 of them said that she did not know. Only one student gave two different answers, stating that the questions were good and also giving a suggestion. So, although the total number of answers came out as 34, 33 students answered in fact. Those who indicated suggestions as to how questions should be asked expressed themselves with the following expressions: “with music”, “with visuals”, “a little easy”, “comprehensible”, “not confusing”. Some of the students provided specific examples regarding their questions such as these: “What kind of, do you like etc.”, “What is your favourite...? etc.”, “What is your thing this unit?”, “Was this unit hard? Why or why not?”, “How often do you watch TV?”, “Does everyone know the answer to that question?”. 4.7. Conclusion In this part of the thesis, I presented the findings of the data analysis of my questions and the student questionnaires. I reported the findings in accordance with the research questions. Initially, I mentioned the frequency of the questions I asked in the lessons, then, I continued explaining the specific types and functions these questions. In addition, I mentioned the frequency of questions that developed the critical thinking skills of my students. Consequently, I reported the findings of the answers my students gave in the questionnaire I administered to them. 101 CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION 5.1. Introduction In this chapter of the thesis, I will discuss the findings that I presented in the previous chapter in view of my prior expectations of the results, reflections I had as an action researcher, and the findings of research studies which explored a similar research topic to my study. I will initially discuss the first four research questions, which are the frequency, types, and functions of the questions I asked in my classes along with frequency of critical thinking questions. Later on, I will review the findings of the questionnaire that my students filled out for this study. 5.2. Frequency, Types and Functions of Teacher Questions Having worked as a teacher for 6 years, I realized I had not been cognizant of the questioning practices I applied in my classes so far. Therefore, as a part of this action research, I attempted to explore a few dimensions of the questions I asked in English in the online classes I had with two 6th grade EFL students of mine in a period of 6 weeks and 50 lesson hours. The dimensions of these teacher questions that I explored were the frequency, types, and functions of these questions in each lesson and total. Moreover, I aimed to identify the number of questions serving the critical thinking skills of the students. As for the frequency, I found out that I asked a total of 1588 questions in all of the 50 lessons. Although the average number of questions I asked in each lesson was around 31-32, the minimum number was 14 (Class B) and the maximum number was 67 (Class A). There were a few things that surprised me about the findings related to the frequency of my questions and one of them was the huge gap between the number of questions I asked in each class. Prior to the study, I did not have an estimation of a specific number in my mind related to the frequency of my questions, yet I had a presumption that I asked a ‘sufficient’ number of questions, at least enough to keep my students engaged in the lesson. This assumption of mine may have been caused by the fact that I felt like teacher talk dominated student talk in my classes. However, the analysis revealed that only a small portion of the teacher talk comprised the English questions I asked. The other finding that astonished me was the frequency difference between the two classes. My data analysis revealed that I asked 903 questions in Class A and 685 in Class B, which was a huge gap as well. This gap could stem from many factors. Although my initial aim of carrying out this action research was to identify the multiple aspects of my questions, upon reviewing the lesson transcriptions, I recognized many more aspects of CI as well. One of these aspects was my use of L1 during the lessons. I realized that I had spoken more in English and 102 less in Turkish in Class A and more in Turkish and less in English in Class B. Watching the recordings and reading the transcriptions multiple times, I also realized that when I sensed that the students in Class B did not understand the questions I asked in English initially, I switched to Turkish and asked further questions in Turkish. Moreover, in later weeks I sometimes even started the questioning session in Turkish to get them used to the topic. However, in Class A, my students understood my questions more easily and swiftly and answered them most of the time. Thus, I rarely needed to switch to asking these questions in Turkish. This may have been one of the factors affecting the difference in the frequency of questions I asked in two different classes. In terms of the frequency of the types of questions, surprising results came out as well. The findings disclosed that the question type I referred to most was display questions followed by lower referential, confirmation checks, requests, comprehension checks, clarification requests, and higher referential questions. It was my expectation that I utilized display questions the most since I knew that I intended to check the students’ knowledge of the content throughout the lessons. The finding was in line with my expectation. Concerning the lower referential questions which are generally asked to discover the students’ feelings, opinions, or experiences about the content, although they seemed high in number since it was the second most predominant question type, the findings showed otherwise. I discovered that only 26,45% of the lower referential questions served that purpose. I used the rest of 74,62% of questions of this type for procedural purposes. Even in procedural function, I asked questions to ask for my students’ choices, for instance, whether they wanted to read a part of the text or not. However, these opinion-related questions did not dominate the lower referential questions I asked for other managerial purposes the answers of which I did not know. The presumption of mine towards the use of critical thinking questions which are higher referential questions in my classes was that it would be pretty low in number. Although the finding also proved my assumption, I did not expect such a low number, 12 out of 1588 questions in total. This finding gave a great clue of the emphasis and the importance I gave to the enhancement of higher-level thinking skills, which was pretty low. On the other hand, since my students were 6th graders, I always had an insight that they would not be able to answer English questions that made them analyse, infer, or evaluate things. However, it seemed that I underestimated my students’ potential, especially those in Class A. As I discussed in the earlier paragraphs, my students in Class A were more competent in both comprehending and replying to my questions in general than the ones in Class B. This resulted in the predominance of the 103 questions I asked in Class A over Class B of all types and higher referential questions in specific. Regarding the functions of my questions, I found out that the majority of my questions served procedural function, followed by convergent and divergent functions. I did not assume that I would use questions more for classroom management and the organization of classroom routines and less for content-teaching purposes. Thus, this result was unexpected for me. Having reviewed the examples of procedural questions in the transcription, I also realized that I used a lot of them in order to direct the students into doing the activity or make them participate in the lessons mostly through requests such as “Can you do/read it?”. In addition to this function, although not more than the former, I also asked some procedural questions to make sure they heard and saw me or the material I shared. Both of these functions, especially the latter one, pertain to the organizational routines of online lessons. When I directed a question to my students, most of the time they initially raised their hands through Zoom’s feature, and then I needed to inform them who was answering which question. This routine called for the use of such questions. My reflections on the reasoning I had behind directing these questions to my students gave me the insight that I tended to use them in the online classes more than I generally do in my face-to-face lessons now. I cannot say that ‘more than I did’ because I do not have a relevant data at hand. On the other hand, a term later that I collected the data for this study, we went back to our physical school environments with my students and since the reflection process of this study continues, I have realized that I do not resort to these questions as much as I did during the online lessons. Furthermore, the difference between the frequencies of convergent and divergent functions caught my attention. As I mentioned earlier, I did not expect that much of infrequency of questions enhancing critical thinking. Since these questions are directly related to the divergent function, it is not surprising that the divergent function turned out infrequent in my classes as well. Henceforth, I will discuss the findings of my study by listing each of them and associate them with the findings of previous studies which explored the same aspects of teacher questions in EFL settings. However, it is important to point out that the level and grade of the students who were the participants of these studies differed from those of mine except for one study which focused on secondary school students, especially the 6th graders (Aprina & Andriyanti, 2020). This variety stems from the fact that there is a lack of studies working with secondary school students which explored questioning practices of teachers. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that this part of the discussion should be evaluated in terms of the similarity of 104 the aspects of teacher questions explored in both this and other studies reported here, not their contexts. I listed six major findings of this study to discuss in light of the findings of other studies. I will discuss the first five in this subchapter (5.2.). However, since the sixth and the last one is related to the students’ answers to the questionnaire, I will discuss this finding in the next subchapter (5.3). 1. The frequencies of my questions varied in each lesson and each class. The first finding is related to the first research question of this study imploring the frequency of the questions I asked in each lesson. Since every lesson consists of a unique series of events and conversations that take place during its time period, it is natural to come up with distinguishing frequencies of question types. However, the point about this finding that I considered striking was the extent the frequencies varied among the two classes. It turned out that out of the total of 1588 questions, I asked 903 of them (56,86%) in Class A and 685 (43,13%) in Class B. Besides, the total numbers of each question type I asked in Class A surpassed those I asked in Class B. The studies that explored the same research topic revealed different frequencies of teacher questions between classes as well. In fact, the majority of them explored the issue by analysing the questions of different teachers and some of them even in different school contexts. A striking finding that was detected in some of these studies was how the number of teacher questions differed in accordance with the experience of the teachers. Even though some studies revealed that the more experienced the teachers were, the greater number of questions they asked (Matra, 2014; Özgür, 2007; Pourhaji, et al., 2019), some found the reverse (Altun, 2010; Omari, 2018). Reflecting the fact that I had six years of teaching experience at the time of the data collection process of this present study, I could be considered as an inexperienced teacher. I do not have a relevant data to make a comparison of the questions I asked when I was less experienced. However, when comparing the frequency of questions asked in each lesson reported in data of the previous studies and my study, I inferred that I asked fewer questions, which could be linked to my lack of experience. In addition to this, it was discovered in those studies that the reflectivity level of teachers had a positive correlation with the number of questions they directed in classes (Tavakoli & Davoudi, 2016), which portrays a lack of my reflective teaching skills. 2. Epistemic questions outnumbered echoic questions. The data analysis showed me that I asked 1216 epistemic questions (76,57%) and 372 echoic questions (23,42%) out of 1588 questions in 50 lessons. Several studies correlated to 105 this finding (Albayrak, 2021; Darong, Kadarisman, Basthomi, Suryati, Hidayati & Niman, 2020; Özgür, 2007; Pourhaji et al., 2019; Şimşek & Kuru Gönen, 2020; Vivekmetakorn & Thamma, 2015). This means that questions calling for information-based answers were utilized more than questions asked for the negotiation of meaning in these studies. On the other hand, the fact that epistemic questions require information-based answers does not render all of them strictly related to the content of the lesson. As explained previously, procedural questions found in this study consisted of epistemic questions as well since I asked either my students’ opinions or their thoughts about matters related to classroom routines. In this case, 586 epistemic questions of all the four types out of a total of 1216 of this type, which makes 48,19% had procedural function. The rest of the 51,80% of epistemic questions belonged to convergent function. Thus, it can be inferred that the prevalence of epistemic questions does not signify the prevalence of content-related teacher questions as well, especially for this study. 3. Display questions outnumbered referential questions. Although there was not a huge gap between these two question types, display questions turned out to be higher in number than referential questions, both higher and lower versions. While 74,62% of the lower referential questions had procedural function, 25,38% of them had convergent function. However, while only 4,57% of display questions had procedural function, the rest of the 95,43% had convergent function. Therefore, display questions were more representative of convergent function than referential questions. Although not all the studies mentioned the functions of these two question types, a lot of studies came up with the similar result that the display questions outnumbered referential questions (Albayrak, 2021; Aprina & Andriyanti, 2020; Broidl, 2015; Course, 2014; Darong et al., 2020; Erlinda & Dewi, 2014; Farahian & Rezaee, 2012; J. Meng, Zhao & Chattouphonexay, 2012; Mousavi, 2015; Omari, 2018; Özcan, 2010; Shakibafar & Bajalan, 2012; Ülker Mermer, 2022; Vebriyanto, 2015; Vivekmetakorn & Thamma, 2015; C. C. R. Yang, 2010). On the other hand, although fewer in number, some other studies came up with the exact opposite result, that referential questions were more in number than display questions. Tharawoot (2016) found that the ratio of referential questions was 63,16% and display questions was 36,84% which amounted to approximately two-third of the total questions. Moreover, Şimşek and Kuru Gönen (2020) discovered that teachers in their study asked 163 referential questions and 69 display questions out of the total of 301 questions. In addition to that, Altun’s study (2010) revealed that the more experienced teachers asked more referential questions than the less experienced teachers. Thus, teachers’ choices of these two question types can be explained on the basis of a few factors such as the level, grade, and age of their students, teachers’ years of experience, or 106 their underlying beliefs about the importance of either asking information-based or opinion- based questions. As for the first factor, students’ L2 level, grade and age are significant factors, because L2 teachers may have had a presumption that their students cannot express their feelings and opinions in long sentences, especially for open-ended referential questions. The student participants of the studies with the finding of the predominance of display questions varied from secondary school students, high school students, university students, and students of all grades and L2 levels. On the other hand, the participants of the two studies with the contrary findings were university students. Thus, although the students’ proficiency levels were high enough to reply to referential questions, the teachers in the first group of studies did not opt for the use of referential questions a lot. As a result, we can infer that although such contextual data may play a role in this matter, teachers’ consciousness about their teaching practices plays a more critical role in the decisions they make regarding their question uses. 4. The number of higher-level questions was considerably low. The analysis of the type of my questions revealed to me that I hardly made us of critical thinking questions. I discovered that when I calculated the frequency of higher-referential questions, as well as divergent questions. I asked such questions only 12 times (0,75%) in 50 lessons. One of the previous studies that revealed the same result as mine, that such questions were used hardly used (Chafi & Elkhouzai, 2014). The participants of that study were elementary school students, and the researchers detected a very low number of questions enhancing higher-level thinking. Moreover, Matra (2014) found no use of higher-order questions directed at secondary school students. Omari (2018) worked with teachers teaching students of all grades and found that they made less use of higher-level questions (19.90%) and more use of lower-level questions (80.10%). Besides, working with university students, Özgür (2007) and Bür (2014) found lesser use of critical thinking questions. Apart from these similar results, some other studies found critical thinking questions to be used more (Döş et al., 2016; Toni & Parse, 2013; Pourhaji et al., 2019; C. C. R. Yang, 2010). What is astonishing is that the L2 level of the learners participating in these studies was not more than intermediate, in fact, the learners had a beginner level specifically in two of these studies (Döş et al., 2016; Pourhaji et al., 2019). While discussing the 2nd finding of this particular study above, I discussed a point about the effect that contextual differences may have had on teachers’ choice of questions. This issue applies to the 4th finding as well. However, we can see that even though teachers in the studies mentioned in the paragraph above had a variety of students, their use of higher-level questions did not increase, even for the teachers who had the students that could have answered these questions. Similarly, it can thus be inferred that 107 teachers’ awareness of the importance of making use of this question type plays a more vital role than their teaching contexts. 5. Procedural function was more prevalent than convergent and convergent was more prevalent than divergent. I found out that the majority of my questions served procedural functions, in other words, I used questions very frequently to deal with issues either related to classroom management or organization of the lesson routines. However, previous studies exploring the functions of teacher questions revealed otherwise, that those questions did not primarily serve managerial function. Although some of the following studies used different classification terms for the functions of questions, since these terms served similar functions, the results of the studies were similar as well. Two studies came up with the result that the primary function of questions was convergent, followed by divergent, and the least used function was procedural (Döş et al., 2016; Hamiloğlu & Temiz, 2012). Three studies found the most prevailing function as convergent, followed by procedural, and divergent (Chafi & Elkhouzai, 2014; Karakuş, 2018; Öztürk, 2016). Moreover, three studies did not include one of these three functions in their analysis. One of these studies found that convergent function outnumbered procedural (J. Meng et al., 2012) and the other two studies discovered that convergent function was more frequent than divergent (Course, 2014; Prasetianto, 2019). Even though the order of frequency of these three functions distinguished from each other in these studies, one point that these studies had in common is that teacher questions were most predominantly utilized for delivering and checking content knowledge or asking the learners’ personal ideas on matters they could answer shortly without the need for further thinking. The fact that divergent function was not the most prominent function in any of the studies had the same reasoning with the low frequency of the questions enhancing the critical thinking skills of the students since this function is achieved only with the use of such questions. On the other hand, divergent function had more frequency than procedural function in some studies, which showed that teachers either did not deal with procedural issues through their questions or they rarely encountered such issues. It is significant to point out not procedural function of questions is not solely entitled to the issues related to classroom management. This function also includes the turns taken by the interlocutors for the negotiation of meaning, all the instructions given by teachers to arrange the lesson activities, and to check the students for that. Besides, it includes the series of conversations that take place about the topic that are not related to the lesson content, which is associated as affective or social dimensions of the classroom events. Therefore, I presume that 108 all these dimensions of this function may not have been encountered in the contexts of these studies mentioned above. Since all the lessons I recorded for this study took place on online platforms, my students and I had a hard time communicating than we did back when we had face-to-face lessons, therefore, I relied on questions a lot to deal with all kinds of procedural issue we encountered. As a result, face-to-face and online lessons have their own peculiar routines, and they need to be taken into consideration to make the best evaluation. 5.3. Student Questionnaire My goal in preparing the questionnaire was to explore my students’ opinions and preferences of my questioning practices that I made use in our classes. In the questionnaire, I presented my students with a list of ten questions consisting of display and lower referential questions. Then, I asked them to state their thoughts about the easiness of answering these questions and to list these questions according to the extent to which they preferred them. Moreover, I requested them to state their opinions on whether they thought my questions were easily answered or understood by them. My students expressed that they preferred being asked lower referential questions to be asked display questions. Moreover, they considered lower referential questions easier to be answered than display questions. The reasons why they found some questions easier and others hard to answer revolved around the fact that they either knew or did not know the meaning of the words in the questions. Although there were also students who linked the easiness of questions to their ability to answer them, the former reason was more dominant. Thus, understanding the questions was a more important criterion for students in their evaluation of the questions’ difficulty level. Furthermore, their reasons for preferring some questions to the others stemmed from the same rationale as well, that they understood or could translate the questions into Turkish. Hereafter, I will continue the discussion by touching upon the final major finding of this study. 6. My students were content with my questions. However, they preferred referential questions to display questions. When I asked my students whether they could understand and answer the questions I asked them in our classes easily, the majority of them replied to this question affirmatively. 93% of my students expressed that they either completely comprehended and answered my questions or they could comprehend and reply some of them. The rest, 6%, was of the opinion that my questions were difficult to be comprehended and answered. Concerning their preferences of my questions, I presented them a list of my questions consisting of two types of questions, display and referential questions. Referential questions were by far more preferred 109 than display questions. The reasoning behind my students’ choices were mostly because they could understand and answer these questions. Thus, these two issues, the attitude towards my questions and preference of specific question types, were interrelated with each other. In other words, the more my students understood and answered the questions, the more they preferred them. In terms of previous studies exploring the similar issue, a few of them discovered that the learners had generally positive views about their teachers’ questioning practices by stating the positive effects of their teachers’ questioning strategies (Alshabatat, 2017; Ameiratrini & Kurniawan, 2020; Kemaloğlu-Er, 2021; Nuryani et al., 2018; Rido, 2017; Tharawoot, 2016; Ullah et al., 2020). In some of these and two other studies, it was discovered that the students favoured referential questions (Kemaloğlu-Er, 2021; Özcan, 2010; Rido, 2017; Tharawoot, 2016; Wright, 2016). In two studies, students expressed their favor on questions that improved their critical thinking skills (Alshabatat, 2017; Prasetianto; 2019). When they were given a chance to talk about what they specifically liked about referential questions, the students in some of these studies expressed that these questions helped them express themselves in a better way, that such questions improved their communication skills, and they liked being asked more personalized questions as opposed to display questions. Although the majority of the students supported this idea, few students in some studies expressed the hardship they faced while answering these questions due to their lack of confidence or their lack of L2 skills. The findings of the studies that explored the learners’ attitudes towards their teachers’ questions were in correlation with the finding of my study as well. (Alshabatat, 2017; Ameiratrini & Kurniawan, 2020; Kemaloğlu-Er, 2021; Nuryani et al., 2018; Özcan, 2010; Rido, 2017; Tharawoot, 2016; Ullah et al., 2020; Wright, 2016). These studies reveal to us that teacher questions play a crucial role in students’ language progress, their willingness to participate in the lessons, their self-expression skills, and their critical thinking skills. On the other hand, these findings lead us to think that such beneficial aspects of the teacher questions can only be achieved if they are used effectively and one of the ways to make it effective is through being aware of the extent of the effect these questions have on students. While the majority of the studies revealed the most frequently used question type as display questions, the students expressed discontent with these questions. Therefore, the presence of these two divergent findings in the literature of L2 teaching and learning is an important point to take into consideration. Thornbury (1996) makes a strong claim by stating that asking referential questions is a challenging classroom practice for teachers due to their 110 underlying beliefs about the need to check the students’ knowledge of the content they teach. Because they made a habit of asking display questions, it is hard for them to refer to referential questions. As a result, this habitual practice makes the teachers constantly stick to display questions and not contemplate the need to ask referential questions. What is even more surprising is the bulk of information given by scholars and researchers about the contributions of referential questions and higher-order questions in multiple dimensions of the classroom. These questions were found to lead learners to produce syntactically longer and more complex sentences by using different vocabulary, conjunctions, and other linguistic items (Brock, 1986; Kemaloğlu-Er, 2021; Özcan, 2010). Regardless of the contributions of the referential questions, it is not to say that display questions or any type of lower-level question need to be disregarded altogether (Saxton, Miller & Laidlaw, 2018). Since both question types have different functions, they assist both teachers and learners in some ways in the L2 teaching and learning processes that take place in the foreign language classrooms. May and Foen (2018) argue that referential questions may not be helpful in motivating the lower-level learners to take part in the lesson since they cannot answer the questions easily. Therefore, in terms of the more prominent frequency of the use of these question types, display questions are regarded as more appropriate for the lower-level learners and referential questions are considered more suitable for higher-level learners (Gall, 1984). In my case, even though the frequency of all referential questions surpassed that of display questions, the frequencies I identified in each class differed. While I asked 276 display and 278 referential questions, both lower and higher types, in Class A, I asked 270 display and 199 referential questions in Class B. This showed that I used slightly a greater number of referential questions in Class A and considerably a smaller number of this question type in Class B in comparison to display questions. When I reflected upon this issue, I came up with a reason that could explain this difference. It was that I tended to use more L2 and less L1 in Class A, because the majority of the students could understand me and reply back when I spoke in English. This gave me the opportunity to open up topics that interested my students to let them have more conversation in English. The transcriptions of the lesson recordings revealed to me that we spoke about different topics in L2, sometimes deriving from the content I was teaching then, sometimes independent of the lesson content. In those series of conversations, I asked them referential questions to which they could reply easily. What was more interesting was that, they even asked referential questions to me. On the other hand, such situations rarely took place in Class B. In those rare circumstances when I talked in L2 with a student in that class, who was always willing to answer my questions, by asking referential questions to him, the other 111 students got distracted because they could not participate. Accordingly, I infer that this surprising finding is in line with Gall’s (1984) claim made above that the appropriateness of asking question types is dependent on the context in which they are asked. Moreover, it is dependent on students’ preferences as well of question types as well (Wilen, 1979). In other words, not all question types are appropriate for all learners. If I continued to ask display questions in Class A and referential questions in Class B, the students in both groups may not have participated in the lessons as much as they did. 5.4. Conclusion In this chapter, I evaluated the findings of this particular study by discussing the similar and different points found in the findings of previous studies exploring the aspects of teacher questions. I also narrated the reflection process I went through as a part of the action research cycle to discuss my findings. The evaluation of all these led me to think that I was not as cognizant of my questioning practices as I thought I had been. Besides, I was hardly aware of my students’ attitudes towards my questions. Teacher questions play a huge and significant role in ensuring CI among the participants of the class, increasing L2 and critical thinking skills of learners, and maximising the benefits both teachers and students would have from the lesson. Therefore, I infer that reflecting upon how teachers make use of questions in class and the effects they have on these dimensions of the classroom is crucial to take necessary actions. 112 CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION 6.1. Introduction In this final chapter of this thesis study, I will briefly revisit the aims of my study, the methods I used to collect data, the findings I came up with, and the evaluations I made out of them. I will follow my brief recap of the details of the study by mentioning the pedagogical implications that can be drawn from this study and suggestions for future research. 6.2. Conclusion My intention to carry out this action research study was to shed some light on the questioning strategies I applied within my classes. To accomplish this aim, I set out specific goals to explore certain dimensions concerning my questions. I aimed to identify the frequency, types, and functions of my questions and whether my questions enhanced the critical thinking skills of my students. I collected data from the online classes I had with two of my 6 th grade classes, A and B, in the spring term of the 2020-2021 educational year. 65 students in these classes took part in the study. To identify my questions, I recorded 60 lessons in a period of six weeks, used 10 of them as the pilot study and 50 of them for the actual study, and extracted the transcriptions of them. Then, I analysed my questions in terms of these three dimensions by using a framework I adapted from Long and Sato’s (1983) and Todd’s (1997) frameworks. Moreover, I intended to find out the opinions and preferences of my students with regard to my questions and I designed a questionnaire with open-ended questions for this. 33 students volunteered to fill out the questionnaire. The analysis of the questions found in the lesson recordings revealed that I asked a total of 1588 questions in 50 lessons, which was approximately 31-32 lessons on average. The minimum number of questions I asked was 14 and the maximum number of questions was 67. 903 questions belonged to the ones I asked in Class A and 685 questions belonged to the ones I asked in Class B. It appeared that I made more use of questions in Class A compared to Class B. This also applied to the types of questions, hence, the frequency of each type of question surpassed in Class A. As for general question types, I asked epistemic questions more frequently than echoic questions. Concerning the specific question types, display questions were the most frequent ones, and they were followed by lower referential, confirmation checks, requests, comprehension checks, clarification requests, and higher referential questions. In terms of functions, the majority of questions served procedural function, therefore, I asked these questions to deal with managerial issues and to organize the conduct of the classroom activities. The second most frequent function was convergent which was related to 113 the questions I asked concerning the content I taught and the material we used throughout the lesson. The last and the least frequent function was divergent which was related to the questions I asked to get a variety of answers from my students and get them to activate their higher-order thinking skills. With regard to the association of question types with their functions, I found out that all of the echoic questions; clarification requests, confirmation checks, and comprehension checks, and one type of epistemic question; requests, correlated with procedural function. I also came up with the result that some question types served different functions depending on the context I asked them. Display and lower referential questions served both procedural and convergent functions and higher referential questions served both procedural and divergent functions. With respect to the attitude my students held towards my questions, the questionnaire disclosed interesting results. My students generally expressed positive views about my questions, the way I directed them, and the way I used them to conduct the lessons. When I asked them about the extent to which they considered the questions as easy or hard to answer, the majority of them expressed that it was easy to answer them. However, some also expressed that it was difficult for them to reply to the questions due to a variety of reasons such as the fact that they did not understand, translate the questions, or did not know how to reply to them. I also asked them about their choices of display and lower referential questions which were the two question types that were the most prominent ones out of the seven types. My students preferred referential questions to display questions because they could understand and answer the former type of questions more easily than the latter. To compare the findings of my study with the findings of previous studies exploring teacher questions in EFL settings, all of my findings except one correlated with the findings of previous research. Thus, the facts that display questions outnumbered referential questions, epistemic questions outnumbered echoic questions, convergent questions outnumbered divergent questions, higher-order questions were less frequently used, and the students preferred referential questions were of the prevalent results of previous research. However, the fact that procedural questions became the most frequently referred function of questions was not observed in those studies. Consequently, these results could lead us to think that exploring these aspects of the teacher questions reveals a great deal of data concerning both the questioning practices of teachers and the satisfaction of the students with them. 6.3. Pedagogical Implications Being one of the aspects of CI and teacher talk in specific, teacher questions are indispensable elements of classrooms. They impact the way participants of the classroom 114 interact with each other, the level of thinking activated in the learners’ minds, the extent of the improvement of their language skills, and many more. With these immense contributions in mind, it should be inevitable to take them for granted. However, this is not the case when we review the relevant research. The teachers in practice, whether experienced or inexperienced, may lack the awareness of both their questioning practices and the impacts they have in their classrooms. They may also lack the skills of being reflective and critical about their teaching contexts. I, as a teacher-researcher with seven years of experience as of now, came to the realization that I did not take the moment to reflect upon whatever was happening in my classes and I did not thus observe the effects that my practices had in my classes. Throughout this research process, my reflections were not limited to my questioning practices. My contemplations of this topic led me to do the same with further topics of CI, such as my use of L1, patterns of interaction occurring in my classes, how I gave feedback, the answers my students gave to my questions, and the questions they directed to me and their classmates. Therefore, researching the aspects of teacher questions is likely to enlighten the teachers concerning these issues likewise. Teacher questions have been a topic of exploration quite frequently by researchers. However, when I searched the literature for the previous action research studies in which teachers explored their own questions in L2 settings, I recognized a scarcity of such research. When researchers provide the teachers with the details of their questioning practices as a result of such research, it may not be as effective when those teachers come up with these details themselves. Because in the first scenario, the teachers are deprived of the chance to go through all the four processes of action research: observation, reflection, planning, and action. Therefore, going through these processes provides them with the opportunity to recognize things they have not beforehand and take necessary actions towards these issues they may realize with the help of such research studies. Regarding the steps that I took as a teacher-researcher conducting this action research study, I went through the first phase, observation, during the data collection process while I was teaching and analysis process while I was watching the recordings of my lessons. I also went through the second phase, reflection, throughout the research period, especially during and after I analysed data of this study. As for the last two phases, planning and action, I began to think of some actions that I would take in the course of my future lessons after I did the analysis. However, I have not taken these actions yet since the action research cycle continues. First of all, having realized that I was not cognizant of my questioning practices inspired me to develop 115 an awareness towards this issue in each class, not only the ones I collected data from but also the other classes that I taught. To specify, I realized that I should be more aware of whether the question types I ask in each class is appropriate for the group of learners in those classes. For that, first I plan to either observe or collect data from my other classes, then assess the appropriateness of my questioning practices. I plan to find this out by exploring whether the students in those classes can understand and answer my questions and also whether my questions spark my students’ interests. To assess to what extent my students can understand and answer my questions, I can make use of a questionnaire as the one I used for this study, analyse the answers they give within the lesson, or administer a test to measure their answers. As for assessing their interests, I can accomplish that by conducting a needs analysis by introducing the themes and topics that will be in the coursebooks and the materials I will be using to my students and evaluate to what extent they appeal to my students. After then, I aim to think of which question types are more suitable to be used in those classes and plan these questions beforehand. To this end, I intend to go over the materials I will use, content I will teach, and topics I will make use of in those classes and then form questions out of them. In that way, I can make use of a variety of question types in my classes rather than using some question types predominantly without carefully reflecting on the appropriateness of my questions for my teaching contexts. Moreover, I wish to increase the frequency of the critical thinking questions in my classes. With the help of this current research, I realized that I rarely used these questions even in the classes with the students who could answer such questions. Therefore, I intend to include critical thinking questions in my questioning practices and increase the frequency of them in my classes. Paul and Elder (2016) suggest that increasing the critical thinking levels of learners can be accomplished through creating a classroom environment where learners know how to ask questions as well. Thus, the goal should not be only to increase the frequency and variety of higher-level teacher questions in L2 classrooms, but also to make the students questioners likewise. To this end, I plan to develop a classroom environment where the students can reflect on and evaluate on both related to lesson content and out-of-content topics. Consequently, I intend to improve the questioning practices of my students who are already used to ask questions in class. Moreover, I aim to make the other students of mine familiar with asking questions who hardly ever ask questions during the lesson. I believe this correlates with the need to implement one of 4Cs of the 21st century skills in the foreign language classrooms (Bağ & Gürsoy, 2021). 116 As for the ways to emphasize the significance of this issue, teachers’ awareness about it can be raised through training. In order to test out whether training would change the use of critical thinking questions of teachers, Caravaca (2019) conducted an experimental study and proved that it did. Although trained teachers increased their use of higher-order questions compared to the non-trained teachers, the former still did not ask such questions more than they asked lower-level ones. Thus, we can understand that training teachers on this matter is effective. It can be another topic of discussion whether critical thinking questions should outnumber other question types. However, since the studies revealed either low or no use of such questions, increasing the present frequencies by increasing teachers’ awareness of the effect of these questions would still be an effective change for the better. The need for such a change can be reasoned better when the beneficial aspects of critical thinking questions are mentioned. For instance, it was found that asking such questions to learners directly affected the level of CI (Al-Zahrani & Al-Bargi, 2017). In other words, teacher-centered classrooms evolve into more student-centered classrooms where their answers to questions are valued and supported with feedback, and they are encouraged to ask questions to their teachers (Şeker & Kömür, 2008). Another aspect is the extent of the improvement of the students’ responses to the questions (Caravaca, 2019). The studies showed that both referential questions and higher-level questions enabled learners to enhance their output. Therefore, such contributions of using higher-order questions in L2 classrooms should not be taken for granted. 6.4. Further Research Since I researched the questions that I asked in online lessons in this present study, it brought about results pertaining to the circumstances of online teaching settings. Although online teaching was not a new concept to some educational institutions beforehand, it has been practiced more widely almost all over the world since the Covid-19 pandemic started. So far, teacher questions have been researched to a great extent within the context of physical classroom environments. However, they are yet to be explored in online L2 teaching environments. Hence, the dimensions of teacher questions in online lessons should be researched more, especially by teacher-researchers. Moreover, the comparison between the two environments, face-to-face and online, should be made as well. That is because when the research setting is only one environment, we may not see the distinguishing factors between the two of them. I, myself, did not have a chance to know whether the findings of this study would have been different if I collected data in my face-to-face lessons. The only way to know that is to collect data from both contexts in similar research settings. 117 References Albayrak, H. (2021). An investigation of the question types posed by the English instructors and their impact on student participation: A case study [Unpublished master’s thesis]. 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ELT Worldwide: Journal of English Language Teaching, 3(2), 231-247. 128 Appendices Appendix 1: Turkish Version of the Student Questionnaire: “Students’ Views of the Teacher Questions” ÖĞRENCİLERİN ÖĞRETMEN SORULARI HAKKINDAKİ GÖRÜŞLERİ ANKETİ Sevgili Öğrenci, Bu anket İngilizce derslerimizde size sorduğum İngilizce sorular hakkındaki görüşlerini öğrenmek amacıyla hazırlanmıştır. Bu ankette vereceğin cevaplar doğrultusunda size sorduğum soruları gözden geçireceğim. Dolayısıyla bu anket, derslerimizin daha verimli geçmesine katkı sağlayacaktır. Bu anketi doldurman tamamen gönüllü olmana bağlıdır. Ayrıca, bu ankette vereceğin bilgiler isimsiz olarak toplanacak ve verdiğin cevaplar kimseyle paylaşılmayacaktır. Bu yüzden, lütfen görüşlerini dürüst bir şekilde ifade etmekten kaçınma ve soruları cevapsız bırakmamaya özen göster. Katılımın ve katkın için teşekkürler. Esra Çil İngilizce Öğretmeni Şehit Öğretmen Nurgül Kale Ortaokulu A BÖLÜMÜ 1.1. Aşağıdaki tabloda sizlere derslerde sorduğum soru örnekleri vardır. Cevap vermesi zor olduğunu düşündüğün sorular için 1’i, kolay olduğunu düşündüklerin için 2’yi, cevap vermesi çok kolay olduğunu düşündüğün sorular içinse 3’ü işaretle. 1: Cevap vermesi zor 2: Cevap vermesi kolay 3: Cevap vermesi çok kolay 1. Do you know this book? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran 1 2 3 sorular) 2. Do you like it? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran sorular) 1 2 3 3. Did you read this book? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran 1 2 3 sorular) 4. How do you feel? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran sorular) 1 2 3 5. What is your favourite book? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran 1 2 3 sorular) 6. What does it mean? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) 1 2 3 129 7. What did you understand? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen 1 2 3 sorular) 8. What kind of a girl is Hermione? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen 1 2 3 sorular) 9. Is he (Harry) hard-working or lazy? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap 1 2 3 isteyen sorular) 10. How did Carol feel when she finished the book? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye 1 2 3 dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) 1.2. Yukarıda ‘cevap vermesi zor’ dediğin soruların neden zor olduğunu düşünüyorsun? …………………………………………………………………………………………………... …………………………………………………………………………………………………... 1.3. Yukarıda ‘cevap vermesi çok kolay’ dediğin soruların neden öyle olduğunu düşünüyorsun? ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………...………………………………………………………………… 2.1. Aşağıdaki tablodaki sorulara bakarak a, b, c ve d bölümlerini doldur. Boşlukları doldururken soruların numaralarını yazman yeterli, soruyu yazmana gerek yok. a) Hiç tercih etmediğim sorular: ………………………………………………………………… b) Daha az tercih ettiğim sorular: ……………………………………………………………….. c) Daha çok tercih ettiğim sorular: ……………………………………………………………… d) En çok tercih ettiğim sorular: ………………………………………………………………… 1. Do you know this book? (1. tür soru: Bir 6. What does it mean? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye konu hakkında fikrini soran sorular) dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) 2. Do you like it? (1. tür soru: Bir konu 7. What did you understand? (2. tür soru: hakkında fikrini soran sorular) Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) 3. Did you read this book? (1. tür soru: Bir 8. What kind of a girl is Hermione? (2. tür konu hakkında fikrini soran sorular) soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) 130 4. How do you feel? (1. tür soru: Bir konu 9. Is he (Harry) hard-working or lazy? (2. tür hakkında fikrini soran sorular) soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) 5. What is your favourite book? (1. tür soru: 10. How did Carol feel when she finished Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran sorular) the book? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) 2.2. Neden bazı soruları daha az tercih ediyorsun? Lütfen nedenlerini belirt. …………………………………………………………………………………………………... …………………………………………………………………………………………………... 2.3. Neden bazı soruları daha çok tercih ediyorsun? Lütfen nedenlerini belirt. ...………………………………………………………………………………………………… …….…………………………………………………………………………………………….. B BÖLÜMÜ Bu bölümdeki anket sorularını yukarıdaki tabloda verdiğim örnek soruları ya da derslerimizde size sorduğum başka soruları düşünerek cevaplayabilirsin. 1. Derste sorduğum İngilizce sorular sence kolayca anlaşılabiliyor mu? Neden? …………………………………………………………………………………………………... …………………………………………………………………………………………………... 2. Derste sorduğum İngilizce sorular sence cevap verilebiliyor mu? Neden? …………………………………………………………………………………………………... ………………………………………………………………………………………………...… 3. Nasıl sorular sormamı istersin? Bir örnek verebilir misin? ………………………………………………………………………………………………....... Anket bitti. Katıldığın için teşekkür ederim.  131 Appendix 2: English Version of the Student Questionnaire: “Students’ Views of the Teacher Questions” STUDENTS’ VIEWS OF THE TEACHER QUESTIONS QUESTIONNAIRE Dear student, This questionnaire is designed to find out your views on the English questions I ask you in our English lessons. I will review the questions I ask you in accordance with the answers you will give in this questionnaire. Therefore, this survey will contribute our lessons to be more effective. Filling in this questionnaire depends completely on you, being a volunteer. Moreover, the information you will provide here will be collected as completely anonymous and will not be shared with anyone. So, please feel free to express your opinions honestly and do not leave any questions unanswered. Thank you for your participation and contribution. Esra Çil English Teacher Şehit Öğretmen Nurgül Kale Secondary School PART A 1.1. Below there are some example questions I asked you in the lessons. Rate the questions you consider hard to answer as 1, easy to answer as 2, very easy to answer as 3. 1: Hard to answer 2: Easy to answer 3: Very easy to answer 1. Do you know this book? (1st Type: Questions that ask your opinion about 1 2 3 a subject) 2. Do you like it? (1st Type: Questions that ask your opinion about a subject) 1 2 3 3. Did you read this book? (1st Type: Questions that ask your opinion about 1 2 3 a subject) 4. How do you feel? (1st Type: Questions that ask your opinion about a 1 2 3 subject) 5. What is your favourite book? (1st Type: Questions that ask your opinion 1 2 3 about a subject) 132 6. What does it mean? (2nd Type: Question that ask for an answer based on 1 2 3 information) 7. What did you understand? (2nd Type: Question that ask for an answer 1 2 3 based on information) 8. What kind of a girl is Hermione? (2nd Type: Question that ask for an 1 2 3 answer based on information) 9. Is he (Harry) hard-working or lazy? (2nd Type: Question that ask for an 1 2 3 answer based on information) 10. How did Carol feel when she finished the book? (2nd Type: Question 1 2 3 that ask for an answer based on information) 1.2. Why do you think the questions above that you said “hard-to-answer” are hard? ………………………………………………………………………………………………....... …………………………………………………………………………………………………... 1.3. Why do you think the questions above you said very-easy-to-answer are like that? ………………………………………………………………………………………………....... …………………………………………………………………………………………………... 2.1. Fill the parts, a, b, c and d, by looking at the questions in the table. When you fill the table you can just write the number of the questions, you don’t need to write the question itself. a) Questions I never prefer: ……………………………………………………………………... b) Questions I prefer less: ………………………………………………………………………. c) Questions I prefer more: ……………………………………………………………………… d) Questions I prefer the most: ………………………………………………………………… 1. Do you know this book? (1st Type: 6. What does it mean? (2nd Type: Questions Questions that ask your opinion about a that ask for an answer based on information) subject) 2. Do you like it? (1st Type: Questions that 7. What did you understand? (2nd Type: ask your opinion about a subject) Questions that ask for an answer based on information) 133 3. Did you read this book? (1st Type: 8. What kind of a girl is Hermione? (2nd Questions that ask your opinion about a Type: Questions that ask for an answer subject) based on information) 4. How do you feel? (1st Type: Questions 9. Is he (Harry) hard-working or lazy? (2nd that ask your opinion about a subject) Type: Questions that ask for an answer based on information) 5. What is your favourite book? (1st Type: 10. How did Carol feel when she finished Questions that ask your opinion about a the book? (2nd Type: Questions that ask for subject) an answer based on information) 2.2. Why do you prefer some questions less? Please state your reasons. ………………………………………………………………………………………………....... …………………………………………………………………………………………………... 2.3. Why do you prefer some questions more? Please state your reasons. ………………………………………………………………………………………………....... …………………………………………………………………………………………………... PART B You can answer the questions in this part of the questionnaire by considering the example questions I provided in the table above or other questions that I ask you in our lessons. 1. Do you think the English questions I ask in the lessons are easily understood? Why? ………………………………………………………………………………………………....... …………………………………………………………………………………………………... 2. Do you think the English questions I ask in the lessons are easily answered? Why? ………………………………………………………………………………………………....... …………………………………………………………………………………………………... 3. What kind of questions would you like me to ask? Can you give an example? ………………………………………………………………………………………………....... Questionnaire is over. Thank you for participating.  134 Appendix 3: Parental Consent Form VELİ ONAM FORMU Sayın Veli, Çocuğunuzun öğrenim gördüğü Şehit Öğretmen Nurgül Kale Ortaokulu’nda İngilizce Öğretmeni olarak görev yapmaktayım ve çocuğunuzun sınıfında İngilizce ve Seçmeli İngilizce derslerine girmekteyim. Aynı zamanda Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi’nde Eğitim Bilimleri Enstitüsü İngiliz Dili Eğitimi bölümünde yüksek lisans öğrencisiyim. Yüksek lisans programım kapsamında İngilizce dersinde sorduğum soruların incelenmesine yönelik bir tez çalışması yürütmekteyim. 2020-2021 eğitim öğretim yılının 2. döneminde yapılacak bu araştırma okul müdürlüğümüzün ve Milli Eğitim Bakanlığının vereceği gerekli izinler kapsamında yürütülmektedir. Bu araştırmada öğrencilerden toplanan veriler kesinlikle gizli kalacaktır. Bu tez çalışması kapsamında EBA Canlı Ders ve Zoom üzerinden yapılacak dersler 1,5 ay boyunca video veya ses kayıt yöntemi ile kaydedilecektir. Okullar yüz yüze eğitime açılırsa da dersler aynı zaman dilimi içinde ses kayıt yöntemi ile kaydedilecektir. Bu kayıtların alınma sebebi derste öğretmen olarak kendi konuşmalarımı yazıya geçirip, öğrencilere sorduğum İngilizce soruları tespit etmektir. Öğrencilerin dersteki konuşmaları araştırmada kullanılmayacaktır ve kayıt süresince öğrenciyi dersten alıkoyacak herhangi bir uygulama olmayacaktır. Ayrıca çalışmaya katkı sağlamak isteyen gönüllü öğrencilere derste sorduğum İngilizce sorular hakkında görüş belirttikleri bir anket uygulanacaktır. Öğrencilerin araştırmaya katılmaları İngilizce derslerinde öğretmenin sorduğu sorulara karşı daha farkında olmalarını ve öğretmenin kendi sorduğu soruların farkına vararak derslerini iyileştirmesine katkı sağlayacaktır. Bu bağlamda öğrencinin bu çalışmaya katılmasını, sizlerin de bu formun en altındaki bilgileri doldurarak gerekli izni vermenizi rica ederim. Esra Çil İngilizce Öğretmeni Velisi bulunduğum .................. sınıfı ................ numaralı öğrencisi ................................ …………………………….’in yukarıda açıklanan araştırmaya katılmasına izin veriyorum. Veli Adı Soyadı: İmza: 135 Appendix 4: Turkish Version Expert Opinion Form for the Student Questionnaire ANKET İÇİN KAPSAM GEÇERLİLİĞİ ARACI Sayın Uzman, “Öğrencilerin Öğretmen Soruları Hakkındaki Görüşleri” adındaki bu anket, araştırmacı ve danışmanı tarafından öğretmen sorularını inceleme üzerine yürütülen bir eylem araştırması olan bir tez çalışması için tasarlanmıştır. Çalışmaya aynı zamanda öğretmen olarak katılan bu çalışmanın araştırmacısı, dersine girdiği 6. sınıf düzeyindeki iki adet sınıfta sorduğu soruların sayıları, türleri ve işlevlerini bulmayı hedeflemektedir. Bununla beraber, öğrencilerinin çalışma için kaydettiği derslerdeki sorduğu sorular hakkında görüşlerini ve tercihlerini bulmayı amaçlamaktadır. Dolayısıyla, 11-12 yaşlarındaki 6. sınıf öğrencilerine uygulanmayı düşünülen bu anket, çalışmanın ikinci amacını karşılamak için tasarlanmıştır. Araştırmacı Tez Danışmanı İngilizce Öğretmeni Dr. Öğretim Üyesi Pınar SALI Esra ÇİL Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi İngiliz Dili Eğitimi Bilim Dalı Değerlendiren Uzmanın Adı-Soyadı: …………………………………… Lütfen, anketteki maddelere bakın ve her birine ölçülen alanı ne kadar iyi teslim ettiğine göre “gerekli”, “faydalı ama gerekli değil”, ya da “gerekli değil” şeklinde belirterek derecelendirin. Alan Derecelendirmesi: …..hakkında uzman görüşü: (1) Gerekli (2) Faydalı ama gerekli değil (3) Gerekli değil Not: 2-11, 15-24 aralarındaki anket ifadelerinde verilen İngilizce soruların Türkçe çevirileri ankette öğrencilere verilmeyecektir. Öğrenciler soruların sadece İngilizce hallerini göreceklerdir. Ayrıca, 2-11 arasındaki anket ifadeleri 3’lü Likert-tipli cevap isteyip, diğer tüm ifadelerdeki sorular açık uçlu sorulardır. 136 Anket ifadeleri 1. Lütfen aşağıdaki daha önceki derslerimizde sizlere 1 2 3 sorduğum soruların kolay cevap verilme seviyelerini, ☐ ☐ ☐ 1’den 3’e, en zordan en kolaya kadar bir değer verin. Lütfen değer verirken soruların kalın harflerle yazılan bölümlerine odaklanın. 1: Cevap vermesi zor 2: Cevap vermesi kolay 3: Cevap vermesi çok kolay 2. Do you like it?: Bunu seviyor musun? (1. tür soru: Bir 1 2 3 konu hakkında fikrini soran sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 3. Do you agree with this sentence?: Bu cümleye katılıyor 1 2 3 musun? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran ☐ ☐ ☐ sorular) 4. What is your favourite animal?: En sevdiğin hayvan 1 2 3 nedir? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran ☐ ☐ ☐ sorular) 5. Who is the funniest actor in Turkey?: Türkiye’deki en 1 2 3 komik aktör kimdir? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında ☐ ☐ ☐ fikrini soran sorular) 6. Do you remember big, bigger, small, smaller?: Büyük, 1 2 3 daha büyük, küçük, daha küçük, hatırlıyor musun? (2. ☐ ☐ ☐ tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) 7. Are there other animals?: Başka hayvanlar var mı? (2. tür 1 2 3 soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 8. What is the opposite of ugly?: Çirkinin zıt anlamlısı 1 2 3 nedir? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 9. What is the elephant doing?: Fil ne yapıyor? (2. tür soru: 1 2 3 Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ Gerekli Faydalı ama gerekli değil Gerekli değil 137 10. Which one is true?: Hangisi doğru? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye 1 2 3 dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 11. What were the names of these birds?: Bu kuşların isimleri 1 2 3 neydi? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 12. Yukarıda ‘cevap vermesi zor’ dediğin soruların neden zor 1 2 3 olduğunu düşünüyorsun? ☐ ☐ ☐ 13. Yukarıda ‘cevap vermesi kolay, çok kolay’ dediğin 1 2 3 soruların neden öyle olduğunu düşünüyorsun? ☐ ☐ ☐ 14. Lütfen aşağıdaki sizlere daha önceki derslerimizde 1 2 3 sorduğum soruların arasından daha az ve daha çok tercih ☐ ☐ ☐ ettiklerini numara olarak belirt. Her sorunun numarasını mutlaka aşağıdaki a, b ya da c bölümlerinden birine yaz. Derste sana en çok sorulmasını istediğin, yani en çok tercih ettiğin sorunun numarasını da yaz. 15. Do you like it?: Bunu seviyor musun? (1. tür soru: Bir 1 2 3 konu hakkında fikrini soran sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 16. Do you agree with this sentence?: Bu cümleye katılıyor 1 2 3 musun? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran ☐ ☐ ☐ sorular) 17. What is your favourite animal?: En sevdiğin hayvan 1 2 3 nedir? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran ☐ ☐ ☐ sorular) 18. Who is the funniest actor in Turkey?: Türkiye’deki en 1 2 3 komik aktör kimdir? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında ☐ ☐ ☐ fikrini soran sorular) 19. Do you remember big, bigger, small, smaller?: Büyük, 1 2 3 daha büyük, küçük, daha küçük, hatırlıyor musun? (2. ☐ ☐ ☐ tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) 20. Are there other animals?: Başka hayvanlar var mı? (2. tür 1 2 3 soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 138 21. What is the opposite of ugly?: Çirkinin zıt anlamlısı 1 2 3 nedir? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 22. What is the elephant doing?: Fil ne yapıyor? (2. tür soru: 1 2 3 Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 23. Which one is true?: Hangisi doğru? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye 1 2 3 dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 24. What were the names of these birds?: Bu kuşların isimleri 1 2 3 neydi? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 25. Daha az tercih ettiğim sorular: 1 2 3 ☐ ☐ ☐ 26. Daha çok tercih ettiğim sorular: 1 2 3 ☐ ☐ ☐ 27. En çok tercih ettiğim soru: 1 2 3 ☐ ☐ ☐ 28. Neden bazı soruları daha az tercih ediyorsun? Lütfen 1 2 3 nedenlerini belirt. ☐ ☐ ☐ 29. Neden bazı soruları daha çok tercih ediyorsun? Lütfen 1 2 3 nedenlerini belirt. ☐ ☐ ☐ 30. Derste sorduğum İngilizce soruları kolayca anlayabiliyor 1 2 3 musun? Neden? ☐ ☐ ☐ 31. Derste sorduğum İngilizce sorulara kolayca cevap 1 2 3 verebiliyor musun? Neden? ☐ ☐ ☐ 32. Nasıl sorular sormamı istersin? Bir örnek verebilir misin? 1 2 3 ☐ ☐ ☐ 139 ANKET İÇİN GÖRÜNÜŞ GEÇERLİLİĞİ FORMU Değerli Uzman, “Öğrencilerin Öğretmen Soruları Hakkındaki Görüşleri” adındaki bu anket, araştırmacı ve danışmanı tarafından öğretmen sorularını inceleme üzerine yürütülen bir eylem araştırması olan bir tez çalışması için tasarlanmıştır. Çalışmaya aynı zamanda öğretmen olarak katılan bu çalışmanın araştırmacısı, dersine girdiği 6. sınıf düzeyindeki iki adet sınıfta sorduğu soruların miktarları, türleri ve işlevlerini bulmayı hedeflemektedir. Bununla beraber, öğrencilerinin çalışma için kaydettiği derslerdeki sorduğu sorular hakkında görüşlerini ve tercihlerini bulmayı hedeflemektedir. Dolayısıyla, 11-12 yaşlarındaki 6. sınıf öğrencilerine uygulanmayı düşünülen bu anket, çalışmanın ikinci amacını karşılamak için tasarlanmıştır. Araştırmacı Tez Danışmanı İngilizce Öğretmeni Dr. Öğretim Üyesi Pınar SALI Esra ÇİL Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi İngiliz Dili Eğitimi Bilim Dalı Değerlendiren Uzmanın Adı-Soyadı: …………………………………… Lütfen, anketin görünüş geçerliliğini size göründüğü gibi derecelendirin. UYGULANABİLİRLİK, OKUNULABİLİRLİK, ANLAŞILABİLME KOLAYLIĞI, DÜZEN VE BİÇİM için derecelendirme (1) Kabul edilemez (büyük değişiklikler gerekir) (2) Beklentilerin altında (bazı değişikliler gerekir) (3) Beklentileri karşılıyor (hiçbir değişiklik gerekmez) Puan Gözden geçirme tavsiyesi için Anketin görünüşü için (1) Kabul Edilemez (büyük yorumlar ve öneriler kriterler değişiklikler gerekir) 140 (2) Beklentilerin Altında (bazı değişikliler gerekir) (3) Beklentileri Karşılıyor (hiçbir değişiklik gerekmez) 1 2 3 UYGULANABİRLİK ☐ ☐ ☐ OKUNULABİRLİK ☐ ☐ ☐ DÜZEN VE BİÇİM ☐ ☐ ☐ Standartlara uymayan ve gözden geçirilmesi gereken ifadelerin gözden geçirilmesini tavsiye etmek için lütfen yorumlar ve öneriler bölümünü kullanın. Not: 2-11, 15-24 aralarındaki anket ifadelerinde verilen İngilizce soruların Türkçe çevirileri ankette öğrencilere verilmeyecektir. Öğrenciler soruların sadece İngilizce hallerini göreceklerdir. Ayrıca, 2-11 arasındaki anket ifadeleri 3’lü Likert-tipli cevap isteyip, diğer tüm ifadelerdeki sorular açık uçlu sorulardır. Anlaşılabilme Anket İfadeleri Kolaylığı 1. Lütfen aşağıdaki daha önceki derslerimizde sizlere 1 2 3 sorduğum soruların kolay cevap verilme seviyelerini, ☐ ☐ ☐ 1’den 3’e, en zordan en kolaya kadar bir değer verin. Lütfen değer verirken soruların kalın harflerle yazılan bölümlerine odaklanın. 1: Cevap vermesi zor 2: Cevap vermesi kolay 3: Cevap vermesi çok kolay 2. Do you like it?: Bunu seviyor musun? (1. tür soru: Bir 1 2 3 konu hakkında fikrini soran sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 141 3. Do you agree with this sentence?: Bu cümleye katılıyor 1 2 3 musun? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran ☐ ☐ ☐ sorular) 4. What is your favourite animal?: En sevdiğin hayvan 1 2 3 nedir? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran ☐ ☐ ☐ sorular) 5. Who is the funniest actor in Turkey?: Türkiye’deki en 1 2 3 komik aktör kimdir? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında ☐ ☐ ☐ fikrini soran sorular) 6. Do you remember big, bigger, small, smaller?: Büyük, 1 2 3 daha büyük, küçük, daha küçük, hatırlıyor musun? (2. ☐ ☐ ☐ tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) 7. Are there other animals?: Başka hayvanlar var mı? (2. 1 2 3 tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 8. What is the opposite of ugly?: Çirkinin zıt anlamlısı 1 2 3 nedir? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 9. What is the elephant doing?: Fil ne yapıyor? (2. tür soru: 1 2 3 Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 10. Which one is true?: Hangisi doğru? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye 1 2 3 dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 11. What were the names of these birds?: Bu kuşların 1 2 3 isimleri neydi? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen ☐ ☐ ☐ sorular) 12. Yukarıda ‘cevap vermesi zor’ dediğin soruların neden 1 2 3 zor olduğunu düşünüyorsun? ☐ ☐ ☐ 13. Yukarıda ‘cevap vermesi kolay, çok kolay’ dediğin 1 2 3 soruların neden öyle olduğunu düşünüyorsun? ☐ ☐ ☐ 14. Lütfen aşağıdaki sizlere daha önceki derslerimizde 1 2 3 sorduğum soruların arasından daha az ve daha çok ☐ ☐ ☐ 142 tercih ettiklerini numara olarak belirt. Her sorunun numarasını mutlaka aşağıdaki a, b ya da c bölümlerinden birine yaz. Derste sana en çok sorulmasını istediğin, yani en çok tercih ettiğin sorunun numarasını da yaz. (2-11 arasındaki anket maddelerine bakın.) 15. Do you like it?: Bunu seviyor musun? (1. tür soru: Bir 1 2 3 konu hakkında fikrini soran sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 16. Do you agree with this sentence?: Bu cümleye katılıyor 1 2 3 musun? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran ☐ ☐ ☐ sorular) 17. What is your favourite animal?: En sevdiğin hayvan 1 2 3 nedir? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran ☐ ☐ ☐ sorular) 18. Who is the funniest actor in Turkey?: Türkiye’deki en 1 2 3 komik aktör kimdir? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında ☐ ☐ ☐ fikrini soran sorular) 19. Do you remember big, bigger, small, smaller?: Büyük, 1 2 3 daha büyük, küçük, daha küçük, hatırlıyor musun? (2. ☐ ☐ ☐ tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) 20. Are there other animals?: Başka hayvanlar var mı? (2. 1 2 3 tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 21. What is the opposite of ugly?: Çirkinin zıt anlamlısı 1 2 3 nedir? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 22. What is the elephant doing?: Fil ne yapıyor? (2. tür soru: 1 2 3 Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 23. Which one is true?: Hangisi doğru? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye 1 2 3 dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 143 24. What were the names of these birds?: Bu kuşların 1 2 3 isimleri neydi? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen ☐ ☐ ☐ sorular) 25. Daha az tercih ettiğim sorular: 1 2 3 ☐ ☐ ☐ 26. Daha çok tercih ettiğim sorular: 1 2 3 ☐ ☐ ☐ 27. En çok tercih ettiğim soru: 1 2 3 ☐ ☐ ☐ 28. Neden bazı soruları daha az tercih ediyorsun? Lütfen 1 2 3 nedenlerini belirt. ☐ ☐ ☐ 29. Neden bazı soruları daha çok tercih ediyorsun? Lütfen 1 2 3 nedenlerini belirt. ☐ ☐ ☐ 30. Derste sorduğum İngilizce soruları kolayca 1 2 3 anlayabiliyor musun? Neden? ☐ ☐ ☐ 31. Derste sorduğum İngilizce sorulara kolayca cevap 1 2 3 verebiliyor musun? Neden? ☐ ☐ ☐ 32. Nasıl sorular sormamı istersin? Bir örnek verebilir 1 2 3 misin? ☐ ☐ ☐ 144 Appendix 5: English Version Expert Opinion Form for the Student Questionnaire CONTENT VALIDATION INSTRUMENT FOR QUESTIONNAIRE Dear Expert, The questionnaire, named as “Students’ Views of the Teacher Questions”, was designed by the researcher and her supervisor for a thesis study, which is an action research study conducted on exploring teacher questions. The researcher of this study, who also participates the study as the teacher, aims to find out the amount, types, and functions of the questions she asks in two of her 6th grade classes. In addition, she aims to find out her students’ opinions and preferences of her questions asked in the lessons recorded for the study. Therefore, this questionnaire, planned to be given to 11-12 year-old 6th grade students, was prepared to meet the second goal of the study. M.A. Student Thesis Supervisor English Teacher Assist. Prof. Pınar SALI Esra ÇİL Bursa Uludağ University Faculty of Education Department of English Language Teaching Name and surname of the expert: …………………………………… Please, look at the items in the questionnaire and rate each of them according to how well it represents the domain being tested by indicating whether it is “essential”, “useful but not essential” or “not necessary”. Domain Ratings: Expert opinion about ……: (1) Essential (2) Useful but not essential (3) Not necessary Note: The Turkish translation of the English questions given in these items of the questionnaire, 2-11 and 15-24, will not be provided to the students. The students will only see the English version of the questions. Besides, the items of the questionnaire between 2-11 require the students to answer on 3-point Likert scale. The rest of the items contain open-ended questions. 145 Questionnaire Statements 1. Please rate the questions below that I asked you in our 1 2 3 previous classes from 1 to 3, according to the difficulty of ☐ ☐ ☐ answering them, from the hardest to the easiest to answer. Please focus on the bold words in the questions while rating them. (1: Hard to answer, 2: Easy to answer, 3: Very easy to answer) 2. Do you like it?: Bunu seviyor musun? (1. tür soru: Bir konu 1 2 3 hakkında fikrini soran sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 3. Do you agree with this sentence?: Bu cümleye katılıyor 1 2 3 musun? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 4. What is your favourite animal?: En sevdiğin hayvan nedir? (1. 1 2 3 tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 5. Who is the funniest actor in Turkey?: Türkiye’deki en komik 1 2 3 aktör kimdir? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran ☐ ☐ ☐ sorular) 6. Do you remember big, bigger, small, smaller?: Büyük, daha 1 2 3 büyük, küçük, daha küçük, hatırlıyor musun? (2. tür soru: ☐ ☐ ☐ Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) 7. Are there other animals?: Başka hayvanlar var mı? (2. tür 1 2 3 soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 8. What is the opposite of ugly?: Çirkinin zıt anlamlısı nedir? (2. 1 2 3 tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 9. What is the elephant doing?: Fil ne yapıyor? (2. tür soru: 1 2 3 Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ Essential Useful but not essential Not necessary 146 10. Which one is true?: Hangisi doğru? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı 1 2 3 cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 11. What were the names of these birds?: Bu kuşların isimleri 1 2 3 neydi? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 12. Why do you think answering the questions above are hard to 1 2 3 answer? ☐ ☐ ☐ 13. Why do you think answering the questions above easy or very 1 2 3 easy to answer? ☐ ☐ ☐ 14. Please state the questions below (please refer to the 1 2 3 questionnaire statements between 2-11) that I asked you in our ☐ ☐ ☐ previous classes as the less preferred ones and the most preferred ones. Write the numbers of the questions to one of the parts below; a, b, or c. Please also write the number of the question which you would like me to ask you the most in the lesson, i.e. the one you most prefer. 15. Do you like it?: Bunu seviyor musun? (1. tür soru: Bir konu 1 2 3 hakkında fikrini soran sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 16. Do you agree with this sentence?: Bu cümleye katılıyor musun? 1 2 3 (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 17. What is your favourite animal?: En sevdiğin hayvan nedir? (1. 1 2 3 tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 18. Who is the funniest actor in Turkey?: Türkiye’deki en komik 1 2 3 aktör kimdir? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran ☐ ☐ ☐ sorular) 19. Do you remember big, bigger, small, smaller?: Büyük, daha 1 2 3 büyük, küçük, daha küçük, hatırlıyor musun? (2. tür soru: ☐ ☐ ☐ Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) 147 20. Are there other animals?: Başka hayvanlar var mı? (2. tür 1 2 3 soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 21. What is the opposite of ugly?: Çirkinin zıt anlamlısı nedir? (2. 1 2 3 tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 22. What is the elephant doing?: Fil ne yapıyor? (2. tür soru: 1 2 3 Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 23. Which one is true?: Hangisi doğru? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı 1 2 3 cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 24. What were the names of these birds?: Bu kuşların isimleri 1 2 3 neydi? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 25. The questions I prefer less: 1 2 3 ☐ ☐ ☐ 26. The questions I prefer more: 1 2 3 ☐ ☐ ☐ 27. The question I prefer the most: 1 2 3 ☐ ☐ ☐ 28. Why do you prefer some questions less and others more? 1 2 3 Please state your reasons. ☐ ☐ ☐ 29. Can you understand the questions I ask in the lessons easily? 1 2 3 Why? ☐ ☐ ☐ 30. Can you answer the questions I ask in the lessons easily? Why? 1 2 3 ☐ ☐ ☐ 31. What kind of questions would you like me to ask? Can you 1 2 3 give an example? ☐ ☐ ☐ 32. The questions I prefer less: 1 2 3 ☐ ☐ ☐ 148 FACE VALIDATION FORM FOR QUESTIONNAIRE Dear Expert, The questionnaire, named as “Students’ Views of the Teacher Questions”, was designed by the researcher and her supervisor for a thesis study, which is an action research study conducted on exploring teacher questions. The researcher of this study, who also participates the study as the teacher, aims to find out the amount, types, and functions of the questions she asks in two of her 6th grade classes. In addition, she aims to find out her students’ opinions and preferences of her questions asked in the lessons recorded for the study. Therefore, this questionnaire, planned to be given to 11-12 year-old 6th grade students, was prepared to meet the second goal of the study. M.A. Student Thesis Supervisor English Teacher Assist. Prof. Pınar SALI Esra ÇİL Bursa Uludağ University Faculty of Education Department of English Language Teaching Name and surname of the expert: …………………………………… Please, rate the face validity of the questionnaire as it appears to you. Ratings for FEASIBILITY, READIBILITY, EASE OF COMPREHENSIBILITY, LAYOUT AND STYLE (1) Not Acceptable (major modifications needed) (2) Below Expectations (some modifications needed) (3) Meets Expectations (no modifications needed) 149 (4) Criteria for the Score Comments and suggestions to appearance of (1) Not Acceptable (major recommend revisions the modifications needed) questionnaire (2)Below Expectations (some modifications needed) (3)Meets Expectations (no modifications needed) 1 2 3 FEASIBILITY ☐ ☐ ☐ READIBILITY ☐ ☐ ☐ LAYOUT AND STYLE ☐ ☐ ☐ Please use the comments and suggestions section to recommend revisions for the statements NOT meeting standards and needed to be revised. Note: The Turkish translation of the English questions given in these items of the questionnaire, 2-11 and 15-24, will not be provided to the students. The students will only see the English version of the questions. Besides, the items of the questionnaire between 2-11 require the students to answer on 3-point Likert scale. The rest of the items contain open-ended questions. Ease of Questionnaire Statements Comprehensibili ty 1. Please rate the questions below that I asked you in our 1 2 3 previous classes from 1 to 3, according to the difficulty of ☐ ☐ ☐ answering them, from the hardest to the easiest to answer. Please focus on the bold words in the questions while rating them. (1: Hard to answer, 2: Easy to answer, 3: Very easy to answer) 150 2. Do you like it?: Bunu seviyor musun? (1. tür soru: Bir konu 1 2 3 hakkında fikrini soran sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 3. Do you agree with this sentence?: Bu cümleye katılıyor 1 2 3 musun? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran ☐ ☐ ☐ sorular) 4. What is your favourite animal?: En sevdiğin hayvan nedir? 1 2 3 (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 5. Who is the funniest actor in Turkey?: Türkiye’deki en komik 1 2 3 aktör kimdir? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran ☐ ☐ ☐ sorular) 6. Do you remember big, bigger, small, smaller?: Büyük, daha 1 2 3 büyük, küçük, daha küçük, hatırlıyor musun? (2. tür soru: ☐ ☐ ☐ Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) 7. Are there other animals?: Başka hayvanlar var mı? (2. tür 1 2 3 soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 8. What is the opposite of ugly?: Çirkinin zıt anlamlısı nedir? 1 2 3 (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 9. What is the elephant doing?: Fil ne yapıyor? (2. tür soru: 1 2 3 Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 10. Which one is true?: Hangisi doğru? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye 1 2 3 dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 11. What were the names of these birds?: Bu kuşların isimleri 1 2 3 neydi? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 12. Why do you think answering the questions above are hard to 1 2 3 answer? ☐ ☐ ☐ 13. Why do you think answering the questions above easy or 1 2 3 very easy to answer? ☐ ☐ ☐ 14. Please state the questions below (please refer to the 1 2 3 questionnaire statements between 2-11) that I asked you in ☐ ☐ ☐ our previous classes as the less preferred ones and the most preferred ones. Write the numbers of the questions to one of 151 the parts below; a, b, or c. Please also write the number of the question which you would like me to ask you the most in the lesson, i.e. the one you most prefer. 15. Do you like it?: Bunu seviyor musun? (1. tür soru: Bir konu 1 2 3 hakkında fikrini soran sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 16. Do you agree with this sentence?: Bu cümleye katılıyor 1 2 3 musun? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran ☐ ☐ ☐ sorular) 17. What is your favourite animal?: En sevdiğin hayvan nedir? 1 2 3 (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 18. Who is the funniest actor in Turkey?: Türkiye’deki en komik 1 2 3 aktör kimdir? (1. tür soru: Bir konu hakkında fikrini soran ☐ ☐ ☐ sorular) 19. Do you remember big, bigger, small, smaller?: Büyük, daha 1 2 3 büyük, küçük, daha küçük, hatırlıyor musun? (2. tür soru: ☐ ☐ ☐ Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) 20. Are there other animals?: Başka hayvanlar var mı? (2. tür 1 2 3 soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 21. What is the opposite of ugly?: Çirkinin zıt anlamlısı nedir? 1 2 3 (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 22. What is the elephant doing?: Fil ne yapıyor? (2. tür soru: 1 2 3 Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 23. Which one is true?: Hangisi doğru? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye 1 2 3 dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 24. What were the names of these birds?: Bu kuşların isimleri 1 2 3 neydi? (2. tür soru: Bilgiye dayalı cevap isteyen sorular) ☐ ☐ ☐ 25. The questions I prefer less: 1 2 3 ☐ ☐ ☐ 26. The questions I prefer more: 1 2 3 ☐ ☐ ☐ 27. The question I prefer the most: 1 2 3 152 ☐ ☐ ☐ 28. Why do you prefer some questions less and others more? 1 2 3 Please state your reasons. ☐ ☐ ☐ 29. Can you understand the questions I ask in the lessons easily? 1 2 3 Why? ☐ ☐ ☐ 30. Can you answer the questions I ask in the lessons easily? 1 2 3 Why? ☐ ☐ ☐ 31. What kind of questions would you like me to ask? Can you 1 2 3 give an example? ☐ ☐ ☐ 32. Why do you prefer some questions less and others more? 1 2 3 Please state your reasons. ☐ ☐ ☐ 153 Appendix 6: Permission of the Ethics Committee 154 Appendix 7: Permission of Directorate of National Education of İstanbul 155 156 157 Appendix 8: Jefferson’s Transcription Convention (2004) 158 Appendix 9: Sample Transcription Extract of a Class A’s Lesson 6th Week 5th Lesson T: Yara. Exactly. Scar actually means, yara. Huh huh. Okay. Um, then next question, which one is true? (book question) Demir, now you can answer the question. S13: Scar didn't mean the election. Scar wasn't candidate for the election. Simba didn't want to have an election. The first president of the forest was Scar. C? No. T: C: Simba didn't want to have an election. No actually. S13: Yes, err. B. T: (He) huh, are you sure? (T: Confirmation check, F: Procedural) S13: No. T: No. ((laughs)) S13: A, apple. T: A is correct. Scar didn’t. ((we all laugh)) You're going like C, B, A. Okay. Scar didn't win the election. Who won the election? (T: Display, F: Convergent)...Simba. S13: Err, Simba won the election. T: Huh huh. Exactly. S13: He’s, err, err T: More, more votes. S13: Yes. T: Huh huh. He has got more votes. Yani daha fazla oyu var. Okay. Just one minute. I'm going to write on the students group. I’m going to write your friends: Where are you?...Ah, how many students are there? ((I ask to myself, not to students))…Okay. Then number four, find the picture that shows counting the votes, you know, counting means 1, 2, 3, 4. Like this, counting. I'm counting my pen and pencils. 1, 2, 3. ((I show to my students)) S17: We learned this in countable and uncountable topic. T: Exactly. Also. Huh huh. Umm, Buse? S10: Find the picture that shows coun, err, counting the votes. B. T: B. Okay. And in this picture, what is he counting? (T: Display, F: Convergent) He or she, I don't know. What is he or she counting? (T: Display, F: Convergent) Neyi sayıyor burada? Not pen, not pencils, not votes. S17: (Can I). T: What are these? What are these? (T: Display, F: Convergent) Damla? S17: Paper. 159 T: Paper. Huh huh. And he's counting or she is counting the papers in plural. Okay. Question five. According to Simba, do the animals have a right to vote? (book question) Right to vote means oy vermeye hakları var mı? Simba’ya göre hayvanların oy vermeye hakları var mı? Err, Zeliha, can you answer? (T: Request, F: Procedural) S30: Yes, they do. T: Yes, they do. Okay. And the last question, what did Scar do after the election is over? What did scar do after the election is over? (book question) Demir number 1, Demir number 1 this time...No answer. Then, Asaf? ((we had an out of lesson talk)) T: Huh, şu soruyu cevaplayalım. Iı, bir duyuru yapacağım size. Evet Demir number 2, can you answer this question? (T: Request, F: Procedural) S13: Err, the, the election day counted the votes. T: What did Scar do? (book question) Scar ne yaptı? Did he count the votes? (T: Display, F: Convergent) S13: Hmm, respected the results and the helped his nephew. T: Huh huh. Exactly. That's what Scar did. 160 Appendix 10: Sample Transcription Extract of a Class B’s Lesson 3rd Week 3rd Lesson S15: Hocam ama boyut olarak değil sanırım.] Büyük aslan derken şeyden bahsediyor, ünvan gibi bir şeyden bahsediyor o great. T: I don’t know. Err, now, I'm going to show you the trailer of the movie. By the way, I think it's a very, um, old movie. Because when I was a child, when I was your age, I remember this movie came out. Let’s watch the trailer. By the way, it's a movie series. For example, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of Dawn Trainer, yani bir seri bu sanırım. Let's watch it. I think this is the first movie. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Okay. ((I open the trailer)) S15: ( ) hocam ya. T: One minute, the quality is very very bad. I want to open another video with better quality. It’s not better but okay. ((I laugh and open another trailer)) Okay, so she is the White Witch. And I think these are her, um, slaves. They or- obey them. And you can see here it's winter. ((I continue)) 100-year winter. [100. S15: 100 yıllık kış. T: Yes. S15: Hocam aklıma Buzul Çağı geldi ya. Bir de böyle büyük kurtlar falan da var. Gerçek buzul çağında büyük kurtlar vardı yani tarih öncesi. T: Huh. And these are the characters: Lucy, her sister, her little sister, one of her brothers. And this is the great lion. ((I continue)) Okay, so I think that's enough...Now, what kind of a book and movie is it? What kind of a book and a movie is it? (T: Display, F: Convergent) S15: Fantasy. T: Fantasy and? (meaning what else) One more? (T: Display, F: Convergent) S30?: [Adventure. S15: Fantasy and adventure.] T: Adventure, adventure and I think when I see the witch I'm scared. When I see the witch I'm scared. I think this is also horror movie. (laughs) Horror, do you think? (T: Lower referential, F: Convergent) S15?: (No.) T: Do you remember horror movies? (T: Display, F: Convergent) S15: Yes. 161 T: Do you think this is a horror movie? Because the witch is very scary. Bana bü- şu cadı çok korkunç geldi bana mesela. (T: Lower referential, F: Convergent) S30: Öğretmenim bu kurt mesela bir şey diyordu ya orada ben o zaman korktum ( ) değil. T: ((I laugh)) Okay. S15: (Ses 1,2) T: Then, now we're going to answer the questions. Who bought Chronicles of Narnia? (book question) Um, Mustafa, can you translate these questions? ( ) (T: Request, F: Procedural) S15: All of them? T: Yep. S15: Err, who bought Chronicles of Narnia? Mark bought Chronicles of Narnia. T: No! I didn't say give the answers I said translate the questions. ((I laugh)) S15: Ya hep translate mi yapayım? T: Yep. S15: Chronicles of Narnia kitabını kim aldı? T: Huh huh. S15: Kim satın aldı? Ne zaman satın aldı? Bu kitap ne ile alakalı? Mark bunu beğendi mi? Kaç sayfa okudu? T: Yep, thank you. Now I will give you three minutes to do this activity. Actually, I will give you five minutes to do 20A and 20B. Is it long, five minutes? (T: Lower referential, F: Procedural)20A ve 20B için 5 dakika veriyorum, uzun mu? S15: Not too long. T: Okay. Then you can start doing 20 A and B. If you have any questions, you can ask me. S29: Teacher, adventure and? T: Fantasy. 162 CURRICULUM VITAE Educational Background  High School: Aksu Anatolian Teacher School (2008-2011)  Undergraduate: İstanbul University (2011-2015)  Undergraduate: Humboldt University of Berlin (2014-Summer Term)  Graduate: Bursa Uludağ University (2019-2022) Work Experiences  Ministry of National Education (2015-…) Projects:  Global Understanding (2011-2012)  ENTASK (2015)  This is My Pen Pal, E-twinning Project (2019)  Believe in Yourself & Just Speak (2019-2021)  ENROPE (2021) Foreign Languages  English-Proficient  Arabic-A2  German-A1 Publications Çil, E. (2020). Review of the book Task-based grammar teaching of English: Where cognitive and task-based language teaching meet, by S. Niemeier. Journal of Foreign Language Education and Technology, 5(1), 195-203. Çil, E. (2021). The effect of using Wordwall.net in increasing vocabulary knowledge of 5th grade EFL students. Language Education & Technology. 1(1), 21-28.