Pragmatic Function of Questioning Act in EFL Classroom Interaction

Abstract

This study was an attempt to analyses the pragmatic functions of EFL teachers’ questioning act in their interactions with students. Data were gathered from six purposefully EFL teachers’ questions in their interactions with students. Data were transcribed and analyzed following the principle of Conversation Analysis (CA) and Freed’s taxonomy (1994) namely external, talk, relational, and expressive functional category. The Conversation Analysis (CA) revealed that most of the questions served more than one purpose ranging from factual information to teacher expressive styles (external, talk, relational and expressive categories). Among the functions found, confirmation and elaboration functions reflecting respectively the talk and relational functional categories appeared at most. Aside from Freed’s (1994) category, the speculative function was beneficial to extend the interactions. Then, the functions of questions were not only associated with their pedagogical purposes but also with the pragmatic and social functions depending on the context where they possibly appeared.