TEACHERS’ QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH CLASSROOM OF GRADE EIGHT IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

Abstract

The goal of this study was to describe teachers’ questions in English
classroom and the students’ responses toward the questions. In a classroom context,
typically teachers ask a lot of questions. The research indicated that whether or not in
a content classroom or in language classroom teachers asked many questions. The
standard pattern in the classroom was one in which the teacher asked questions, one
or more students responded to the question and then the teacher evaluated the
responses. Thus in term of a classroom context, a questioning session happened
naturally as a process of learning. A descriptive qualitative design was used in this
study. The data of this research was collected from classroom observation of two
English teachers (RP & SG) and two classes (VIII-3 & VIII-5) of SMP N 5 Percut Sei
Tuan. This research dealt with teachers’ questions of grade eight in junior high school
English classroom. This study conducted to answer questions what types of questions
do the teacher tend to use in the daily practices of teaching in the English learning
and how do the students responded to the questions. The finding indicated that in the
questions types, display questions were highly uttered by the teacher rather than
referential questions. As the purposes of learning English in a junior high school
context is to engage student to communicate in spoken, all the questioning functions
are related to eliciting information, checking students’ understanding the lesson being
taught and encouraging them to participate more in the classroom. Therefore, the
questions posed by the teacher were highly distributed. The study is beneficial for
both teacher and student in English language classroom. Questioning and answering
session happen to force students to speak English even though it is only telling what
they know about the lesson. It also beneficial for teachers who facilitates students’
language ability through asking effective question in an effective way.