A descriptive study of teacher's questioning behaviors in Thai EFL classrooms

This is a descriptive classroom-centered study whose purpose was to investigate Thai EFL teachers' questioning behaviors in relation to the course and personal goals. The participants of the study were three Thai teachers at the university level.;As classroom-centered research, this study drew on both classroom observation and interviews. Each teacher was observed seven times and interviewed six times during the second half of the first semester of the 1995 academic year. The audio-taped data were transcribed and analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative method addressed the frequencies and percentages of the aspects of teachers' questioning. Based on the quantitative data, a qualitative analysis of the transcripts was made to describe the occurrences of several aspects of questions posed by the teachers. The qualitative method also entailed the interpretation of teachers' questioning behaviors to consider the degree to which they provided opportunities for students to reach the course and teachers' personal goals. This study followed Fanselow's (1987) idea in formulating multiple interpretations to free the researcher from being limited to preconceived notions about good or bad teaching or to the commonsense interpretation of action.;The major findings of this study revealed that: (1) wh-questions were used the most frequently while tag questions were hardly used; (2) display questions were the predominant type of questions in the classrooms; (3) the content of questions were mostly about the study of special areas or content communicated in textbooks; (4) the teachers' questions contained a small proportion of narrowing characteristics or clues that delimit the expected responses from students; and (5) the teachers' questioning behaviors generally provided opportunities for students to reach the course and personal goals.;Drawing from the findings, four areas of implications were offered: (1) for teachers in Thailand; (2) for teacher education in Thailand; (3) for my professional development; and (4) for future research.