TEACHERS’ QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH CLASSROOM OF GRADE EIGHT IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

The goal of this study was to describe teachers’ questions in English classroom and
the students’ responses toward the questions. In a classroom context, typically
teachers ask a lot of questions. The research indicated that whether or not in a content
classroom or in language classroom teachers asked many questions. The standard
pattern in the classroom was one in which the teacher asked questions, one or more
students responded to the question and then the teacher evaluated the responses. Thus
in term of a classroom context, a questioning session happened naturally as a process
of learning
A descriptive qualitative design was used in this study. The data of this research was
collected from classroom observation of two English teachers (RP & SG) and two
classes (VIII-3 & VIII-5) of SMP N 5 Percut Sei Tuan. This research dealt with
teachers’ questions of grade eight in junior high school English classroom. This study
conducted to answer questions what types of questions do the teacher tend to use in
the daily practices of teaching in the English learning and how do the students
responded to the questions.
The finding indicated that in the questions types, display questions were highly
uttered by the teacher rather than referential questions. As the purposes of learning
English in a junior high school context is to engage student to communicate in
spoken, all the questioning functions are related to eliciting information, checking
students’ understanding the lesson being taught and encouraging them to participate
more in the classroom. Therefore, the questions posed by the teacher were highly
distributed. The study is beneficial for both teacher and student in English language
classroom. Questioning and answering session happen to force students to speak
English even though it is only telling what they know about the lesson. It also
beneficial for teachers who facilitates students’ language ability through asking
effective question in an effective way.