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

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For the completion of this study, I have been fortunate to receive invaluable contribution from many people. First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, M.A Nguy n Th Vân Lam for her absolutely indispensable assistance,ễ ị excellent suggestions, advice and detailed critical comments, without which the study would not have been completed. I would also like to offer my indebtness to all my lecturers at the Department of Foreign Languages Vinh University for their endless– enthusiasm and undeniable useful lectures. In addition, this study also owes its accomplishment to the teachers and pupils at Nam n I high school, Ngh An province, where I had a two-Đà ệ month period of teaching practice because they helped me a lot in information collection. My warmest thanks are due to my loving family, my friends for all thing they have done for me. Finally, I am all to aware that despite all the advice and assistance, I feel that the project is far from perfect; it is, therefore, my sole responsibility for any inadequacies and shortcomings that the thesis may be considered to have. Vinh, May 2004 o Th Thanh H ng Đà ị ườ 1 ABSTRACT Eliciting questions are sure to be useful for teaching and learning English. They make the lessons more interesting and attractive. They also make students more motivated to study. The study of “Using eliciting questions as a technique to teach English to 11th form pupils” is an attempt to provide a basic understanding about English questions and questioning techniques. The advantages of using eliciting questions and some ways to exploit eliciting questions to teach English to 11th form pupils are also mentioned. The two survey questionaires made to the teachers and pupils at high schools provide the reality basic for us to suggest some questioning strategies to help teachers know how to apply questioning techniques to teach English. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Pag e ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABSTRACT TABLE OF CONTENTS PART A INTRODUCTION 1.The Reasons for Choosing the Study 4 2. The Aims of the Study 5 3. The Methods of the Study 5 4. The Scope of the Study 5 5. The Design of the Study 5 PART B DEVELOPEMENT CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 English Questions 7 1.1.1 Definition 7 1.1.2 Question Types 7 1.2 Questioning 11 1.2.1 Aims of Questioning 12 1.2.2 Criteria for Effective Questioning 13 1.2.3 Ways of Exploiting Questioning Techniques in English Teaching 14 1.3 Summary 16 CHAPTER 2 USING ELICITING QUESTIONS TO TEACH 3 ENGLISH TO 11 th FORM PUPILS 2.1 The Advantages of Using Eliciting questions in English Teaching 18 2.2 Some Ways of Exploiting Eliciting questions in English Teaching 18 2.2.1 Using Eliciting questions to Help Pupils Understand More about the Lesson 18 2.2.2 Using Eliciting questions to Check the Concept, the Meaning of Words and Structures 20 2.3 The Situation of Using Questioning Techniques at High Schools in Vietnam 22 2.3.1 Teacher’s Using Questions by Feeling, without Clear Aim 22 2.3.2 No Chance for Pupils to Practice Questions Communicatively 22 2.3.3 Pupils’ Uneven English Level 22 2.4 Findings 23 2.5 Summary 25 CHAPTER 3 SUGGESTED QUESTIONING STRATEGIES 3.1 Suggested Questioning Strategies 26 3.1.1 Student Questions 26 3.1.2 Teacher Questions 26 3.1.3 Somes Steps and Suggestions for Planning Questions 27 3.1.4 Strategies to Make Classrooms Less “Imperative” and More “Interrogative” 30 3.1.5 Shaping to Pupils’ Responses 30 3.2 Particular Examples of Using Eliciting Questions 32 4 PART C CONCLUSION 1. Recapitulation 34 2. Suggestions for Further Studies 34 APPENDICES Survey Questionaire 1 Survey Questionaire 2 BIBLIOGRAPHY 5 PART A INTRODUCTION 1. The Reasons for Choosing the Study Embarking on a new era, the era of science and technology in which informatics and biology have been strongly developing, each country that wants to join in the world community to exchange trade and technology as well as other fields and learn from the others, has to carry out open-door policies. In that process, English, the international language, plays a very important role to link the countries together. Realizing the importance of English, Vietnamese learners have been spending much time and money, paying much attention to study English so that their English can be improved. On the parallel, the teachers keep finding and applying better methods with more effective techniques with a view to help their students. One of the techniques they find useful is questioning. Language teachers ask a lot of questions in class. Questions made by the teachers, however, do not always bring good results as they expected. The effort of this study is to investigate into questioning techniques, and using eliciting questions to teach English to the eleventh form pupils, and to help pupils find learning English interesting. Another reason why the study has been carried out lies in the author’s desire to polish up her teaching skills. To be a future teacher of English, the author hopes to have a good knowledge as well as effective methods of teaching to help her future pupils. Having been working as a tutor of English for many secondary pupils, the author realizes that pupils react to eliciting questions very actively. They are eager to answer questions and more motivated to study. Doing this study helps the author understand more about questioning techniques and know how to use this useful technique effectively in her future teaching. 6 There are other reasons for choosing the study, but the above reasons are the main ones that encourage the author to choose the thesis: Using eliciting“ questions as a technique to teach English to 11 th form pupils .” 2. The Aims of the Study For the reasons mentioned above, the study has been done in order to present some ideas about questioning techniques. The study also aims to provide some ways to exploit eliciting questions to teach English to 11 th form pupils and some suggested ways to use questioning techniques effectively in class. 3. The Methods of the Study The strategic method of the study is the qualitative one which is employed to describe and analyze the data of the study. 4. The Scope of the Study This thesis is about using eliciting questions to teach English to 11 th form pupils. 5. The Design of the Study The thesis consists of three main parts: Part A, “ Introduction”, presents the reasons for choosing the study, the aims, methods, scope and also the design of the study. Part B,“Development”, consists of three main chapters: The first chapter provides the theoretical background. Firstly, a basic understanding about English questions is introduced, that is about its definition, four ways to classify its types. Secondly, some main ideas about questioning technique are also presented. The second chapter provides some ways of using eliciting questions in teaching English to 11 th form pupils. In this 7 chapter, the advantages of using eliciting questions in teaching English, some ways of exploiting eliciting questions to teach English and the situation of using questioning techniques at high schools in Vietnam are mentioned in detail. This chapter also presents the result of the two survey questionaires made to the teachers and pupils at high schools. The third chapter is about suggested ways to make questions in class and particular examples of using eliciting questions to teach English to 11 th form pupils. Part C, “Conclusion”, concludes the whole thesis and gives suggested ideas for further studies. 8 PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 English Questions 1.1.1 Definition A question is a sentence, a phrase even just a gesture that shows that the speakers or writers want the readers or listeners to supply them with some information to perform a task or in some other ways satisfy the request (web site: www.usingenglish.com). 1.1.2 Question types • According to Quick et.al. (1973:191), questions can be divided into three major classes according to the type of answer they expect: (1) Those that expect only affirmative or rejection (as in Have you finished the book?) are YES-NO questions. (2) Those that expect a reply supplying an item of information (as in what is your name? How old are you?) are WH-questions. (3) Those that expect as the reply one of two or more options presented in the questions are ALTERNATIVE questions; for example: Would you like to go for a walk or stay at home? • According to B ngà , et. al. (2001:72), in grammar, English questions are classified into the following types: (i) Yes/No questions Placing the operator before the subject and giving the sentence a rising intonation usually form Yes/No questions. For example: - Do you drink tea? 9 - Can you swim? - Did he go to the university? - Are they coming to the party? Yes/No questions are especially useful for checking comprehension. They are often the easiest questions to answer. They do not require students to produce new language. (ii) “Or” questions The “or” questions are formed in exactly the same way as Yes/No questions, but contain two final elements and differ in intonation; instead of the final rising tone, they contain a separate nucleus for each alternative: a rise occurs on each item in the list, except the last, on which there is a fall, indicating that the list is completed. For example: - Do you prefer tea or coffee? - Are they brothers or just friends? - Will you walk or go by bus? - Did she study in U.K or in the US? (iii) WH-questions The questions are also called “information questions”. With most wh- questions, it is natural to give a short answer. The questions are formed in the same way as yes/no questions, but they begin with a “wh-word”-“when, where, why, what, how, how long, how much, how many”,etc. are included as wh- words. For example: - What do you usually drink? - Where did she study? - How long have they known each other? - When are you leaving? 10 . questions as a technique to teach English to 11th form pupils is an attempt to provide a basic understanding about English questions and questioning techniques techniques. The advantages of using eliciting questions and some ways to exploit eliciting questions to teach English to 11th form pupils are also mentioned.