Questions teachers ask in English classes: do they help students develop communication skills?: a report on a case study in a Japanese high school English language class

This paper focuses on a research project looking at teacher behaviour in the classroom which was designed to help teachers refine their teaching methods and classroom behaviour.In particular, the focus was on investigating the types of classroom questions teachers used.Data was obtained by conducting observations using tally sheets and ethnographic records.The types of questions examined were convergent/divergent display questions and convergent/divergent referential questions.It is commonly held that referential questions encourage more student participation, yet in reality they still constitute a very small proportion of questions asked by teachers in the EFL classroom.This was confirmed in this investigation.It was found that combining convergent/ divergent questions with referential/display categories of questions provided a more indepth analysis of question types and student answers.Even when a question was classed as referential, if it was also found to be a convergent-referential question, the opportunities for students to engage in real communication were extremely limited.It was therefore concluded that to maximize student participation, questions of a referential-divergent nature were the most effective.