A Case Study of Teacher Talk: The Most Frequent Teacher Questions used for Junior High School Students in Banyuwangi

Abstract

In teaching and learning process, most students are not able to learn effectively and perform their best (Zuhdi, 2015). One of the reasons is the way teachers teach them. That is why, it is important for teachers to modify their talk in the classroom by adding some more questions to elicit students' response These questions are called "teacher questions". Teacher questions as part of teacher talk are used to facilitate students' active participation and students' meaningful learning (Kim, 2015). Rymes (2008) divides teacher questions into two categories, they are known-answer questions and open ended questions. There has been a. range of researches undertaken that draw on the utilization of teacher questions in the English teaching and learning process. The researchers conducted their studies in different institutional levels and proficiency levels. From the researches which the researcher has read, the researcher found that there was only one research focusing on the utilization of teacher questions conducted in Indonesia. It means that such a study is scarce. Therefore, in order to address this gap in knowledge, the researcher decided to conduct a research focusing on the most frequent teacher questions used for junior high school students in Banyuwangi, with the overarching research question: 'Which type of questions between known-answer questions and open ended questions frequently asked by the teacher in the English teaching and learning process?' Teacher questions can be classified into known-answer questions and open ended questions through coding. In this research, both English and Indonesian questions were coded. The researcher used coding system proposed by Kerry (1982) to code the teacher questions. The research was done in SMP Negeri 2 Genteng for three days. It is National Standard School that the public perceive as one of favourite junior high schools in Banyuwangi. In this study, the researcher placed herself as an observer who did not involve in teaching and learning process, while the participants were the English teacher of the school and his students in three classes. The purpose of this research was to observe and describe a certain matter, in this case teacher questions. Based on this purpose, the researcher decided to choose a case study design and the method which was used to collect the data was observation through recording. During the observation, the researcher with the help of her colleague videotaped the English teaching and learning process through electronic devices. The data collected were transcribed selectively to focus on teacher questions. Then, the researcher coded the transcribed teacher questions. After the researcher got the transcribed data the percentage of the frequency of each type of teacher questions was then counted using the formula proposed by Ambroiso (2013) in order to get the result. Based on the research result, the researcher concludes that: (I) the frequency of known-answer questions was 16, this result showed that the teacher rarely asked known-answer questions to the students and (2) the frequency of open ended questions was 74, it means that the teacher frequently asked the students open ended questions.