Lecturers' Questions and Students' Responses in English Classroom Interaction

Questioning is an common technique employed by the lecturers to maintain the classroom interaction. This article is the report of the research that tries to answer research problems, namely: (1) What types of questions do the English lecturers use in their classroom? and (2) How appropriate are the students’ responses to the lecturers’ questions? The research method which was applied in this study is descriptive qualitative. The data were taken from the transcriptions of the classroom interaction which was focused on types of lecturers’ questions and students’ responses in the English classroom. The respondents were four lecturers who taught ‘speaking’ at four classes which consist of twenty students at second semester in each classroom. Transcribing the data, categorizing the types of questions, evaluating appropriateness were the techniques which were used to analyze the data. The results show that the types of lectures’ question which were used in the process of teaching and learning involved display questions, divergent questions, convergent questions, procedural questions, clarification check, confirmation check, comprehension check, and question tag. The total questions used were583 questions. Most of students responded lecturers’ questions appropriately. Finally, applying effective questioning techniques by choosing types of questions properly in order to make the students understand the materials learned is the suggestion of this research. Keywords: Lecturers’ Questions and Students’ Responses