Questioning Strategies Based On The Affective Teacher-Student Relationship

The affective factors within the teacher-student relationship play a very important role in questioning activities. However, since the eighteenth century, in Western as well as in Eastern civilization we have concentrated on understanding the rational, cognitive function of the mind of our students in our teaching and learning , while misusing or denying whatever falls within the realm of the emotions or the non-rational. One of the consequences of this situation is the current 'emotional illiteracy' in the development of our students. This bandwagon tendency of putting too much emphasis on cognitive side also affects the researches carried out in different teaching fields. Researchers who study the questioning strategies often focus too much on the skills or process and neglect the emotional factors, and as a result, their studies on questioning strategies become superficial and proceduralized and virtually could not be put into practice. Bringing together mind, heart and body of the students in the classroom and treating them as whole human beings is the only and last necessary avenue to make any questioning strategies effective in teaching context. Written from the perspective of theory and empirical and on the presupposition of that the affective factors within the teacher-student relationship have a decisive word on the questioning activities in the classroom, this thesis is trying to disclose this deep-rooted problem in our education. And taking into account the affective side of language teaching and learning in a very central manner, the writer brought up a series of questioning strategies based on her findings.