Peer Observation 1 Questioning Techniques

Overview
I observed an upper-intermediate monolingual adult group with five male and female students. The
focus of the lesson was on grammar (question tags), pronunciation (intonation in question tags) and
speaking (using question tags to express different functions such emphasis, surprise, confirmation etc)

Reflection
The first thought I had while I started observing the teacher was that undoubtedly we all use
questioning techniques for a huge variety of purposes.
And, to a certain extent, we tend to ask some types of questions more than others and to follow a
pattern that usually goes from simpler to more difficult questions and therefore from simpler to more
complex answers.
I observed the teacher doing what I usually do during any given lesson: she started the lesson asking
some opinion questions (about the weekend and the film festival which is going on in the students
hometown) to break the ice and help the learners switch from their mother tongue to English.
During the lesson other questioning techniques were used and among them the vast majority (see
appendix 1) could be grouped in

Yes/No questions
Open ended questions
Opinion questions
Display questions
Question tags

Reflecting on my own questioning techniques, I could definitely identify the same attitude especially
when teaching higher levels.
Asking different types of questions has many positive effects on the lesson itself: given that the most
important aim every teacher would like to achieve in their lessons is to get their students to talk as
much as possible, questioning represents a great way to generate language.
Thank to the consistent use of questions the teacher maximized the Student Talking Time which was
also one of her main aims.
Of course, while some of the questions used were useful in terms of increasing the interaction and
helping real communication among the learners, other questions such as display questions were not
so useful in that perspective.
But still, using display questions (see appendix 2) allowed the teacher to check diagnostically
students background knowledge on the grammar point presented.
Again, something I use quite often when teaching language points to higher levels as I believe
learners benefit somehow from being aware and able to recognize some meta-language.

On a different note, the teacher asked no Concept Checking questions during the time I was there.
That sometimes happens because we believe or just give for granted that teaching high levels means
learners understand or already know everything we say. No assumption could be more incorrect. I
remember myself doing it and observing the lesson I realized exactly how dangerous it could be for
our students.

As I said before, a variety of questions were asked by the teacher and many of them not only
generated language but also progressed from one-word answers to more complex ones (see
appendix 3). The progression could be seen as a way used by the teacher to guide the learners
towards a higher level of fluency.
By asking open-ended questions (see appendix 4) and pairing or grouping students to discuss them
the teacher gave them some useful speaking practice.
Moreover, using open-ended questions in pair or group work helps the teacher give learners
sufficient time to think about, elaborate their answers and respond. Allowing the right amount of
time to respond giving every student equally the chance to speak, instead of going with the
student(s) who are always the fastest to answer, which is sometimes an issue, is also helpful to
generate meaningful open class discussions interesting both for the students and the teacher as
well.

On the other hand, observing the teacher checking answers to a task and accepting coral answers
(one-word answers) from the students made me think that even though this is definitely a good
technique to save time I would not say the same about giving every student the same chance to
participate or involving shyer students in the feedback.

After observing the lesson, Im more aware of my questioning techniques. I feel Im on the right
track as I use a variety of them with a good degree of understanding of the rationale behind them.
What I would like to work on is increasing the complexity of my students answers probably trying to
predict their answers so that I can ask more meaningful questions, which could generate more
language exchanges.
I would also like to avoid asking questions just for the sake of it. What I mean, is asking a question
and giving the answer myself either because I do not allow sufficient time to respond or because the
question is to difficult to understand or the answer beyond my students knowledge.
I would probably try scripting my questions and verify whether thinking about them beforehand can
genuinely improve my questioning techniques.

References
Scrivener, J. (2011). Learning teaching. Macmillan.
Thornbury, S (2006). An A-z of Elt. Macmillan.
Appendix 1
Yes/no questions
Did you have a nice weekend?
Do you play football every weekend?
Did anyone go to the film festival?
Do you remember you read three stories?
Did you enjoy the stories?

Opinion questions
What did you like about it?
Which is your favorite genre?
Are they all scary stories?
Why do you like spooky stories?

Open-ended questions
Which story did you like best? Why?
Where were they?
What where they doing there?

Display questions
Can you give me a synonym for spooky?
Does spooky mean scary?
What are the auxiliary verbs in English?
How do we form question tags?
What auxiliary do we use? Positive or negative?

Appendix 2
What are the auxiliary verbs in English?
How do we form question tags?
What auxiliary do we use? Positive or negative?
What tense is this? Do we use the same tense in question tags?

Appendix 3
T: where they in the house?
S: yes
T: where exactly were they?
S: they were in the living room, I think.
T: what were they doing there?
S: they were looking for something among the chairs, tables, bookshelves.ummm how do you say all
these things together?!
T: Whats the word for them?
SS: furniture

Appendix 4
Which story did you like the most? Why?
Discuss it with your partner.