ANALYSIS OF TEACHER’S QUESTIONING STRATEGIES IN EFL CLASSROOM INTERACTION AT THE EIGHTH GRADE OF MTsN 6 KOTA PADANG

English as foreign language is studied in educational levels as compulsory subject. In learning English, the students are not only obligated to understand the four skills of English but they also need to use it communicatively. One of activity in interactive classroom to make students able to use English communicatively is by applying questioning strategies. This study focused on the types of questioning strategies in EFL classroom, the teacher’s reasons of asking questions and the influence of questioning strategies on classroom interaction. The design of this research was descriptive qualitative. The participants of the research were one of English teacher and two classes of eighth grade at MTsN 6 Kota Padang. The techniques for collecting the data were observation and interview. From the result of observation and interview, the teacher used procedural questions, convergent questions, and divergent questions, as suggested by Richards and Lockhart. In addition, combination question is another type of questions that teacher used. This type is the combination between Richards and Lockhart theory and Cao Wangru theory. The teacher had four reasons in applying the questioning strategy; to reassure students’ readiness, to ensure students’ understanding, to maintain the classroom control and to encourage students’ knowledge and opinion. The findings indicated that convergent questions were the most used by teacher than other types of questions. Therefore, questioning strategies really influenced most of classroo