Contingency, Convergence, and Divergence of Teachers’ Questions In Classroom Interactions

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze questioning activity uttered by EFL teachers in terms of contingency, convergence, and divergence in their interactions with students. Data were gathered from six chosen EFL teachers’ questions teaching to college students, hereupon were attentively transcribed and analyzed using Conversation Analysis (CA) principle. The results found that contingency questions were in the form of extending, disputing, transforming, and repeating former utterances through clarification, display, and referential questioning types. Apart from contingency, convergence appearing in teacher questions might flourish students’ responses through display questions. Meanwhile, divergent questions tend to enlarge the talks. The seemingly endless “questioning problems” improvising limitless further research studies therewith, employing more data sources in a different methodology as well as the perspective of analysis are suggested as it directly affects the teaching-learning process.