TITLE:
Learning Opportunity and EFL Teachers’ Questions
AUTHORS:
Hongmei Zhu
KEYWORDS:
Postmethod, Question-Answer Sequence, Learning Opportunity
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.4 No.3,
March
29,
2016
ABSTRACT: As postmethod EFL teaching method was proposed in 1999, ideas on teaching and learning be-came unthinkably various and dynamic. The views on teachers’ questions also changed a lot in postmethod period. The term of learning opportunity bridged teaching and learning in this situation. This article aims to explore the way that an expert teacher, an experienced teacher and a novice teacher provide learning opportunities for the students in their question-answer sequences. A CA approach is used to analyze three teachers’ questions based on four different students’ first responses: Right Answer, Partly Right Answer, Incomplete Answer and Refusal Answer. The results suggest that the expert teacher can provide more learning opportunities by strengthening students’ identities, extending students’ contributions, attracting students’ involvement and there is an insignificant relation between the type of questions and learning opportunities. It is suggested that EFL teachers can be more aware of the local and dynamic teaching context and promote more negotiation of meaning and students’ involvement.