STUDENTS' QUESTIONS AND STUDENTS' QUESTIONING POWER IN EFL CLASSROOM INTERACTION

This study deals about students’ questions and students’ questioning power in EFL classroom interaction. This study aimed at finding out the types of questions used by the students in classroom interaction and finding out the factors affecting students’ questioning power. The method of the study was descriptive method with qualitative approach. The source of data was taken from the 2017/2018 students’ of grade ten MIA 7 of SMA N 3 Medan. The data were the utterances of students that delivered the questions. The data were collected in 3 ways by observing, recording and interviewing. The data were analyzed based on Long & Sato theory (1983). The result of this study showed that there were two types of questions used by the students namely display and referential questions. The referential questions were used because the students needed more explanations and more clarifications. The factors affecting students’ questioning power were personal factor, social factor and material. It could be concluded that the questions have very important support in the classroom interaction as one way to initiate the collaboration between teachers and students. The referential questions mostly formulated by students helped them to build their curiosity which becomes the main focus for classroom interaction. Therefore, teachers need to create good class condition to minimize the hindering factors for students’ questioning power in the class.