This action research attempts to find out what kinds of teacher questions in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) activities elicit more answers in English from Japanese elementary school first and second graders. In two studies administered, the researcher taught English to different groups of learners using the same English picture story. In Study 1, using recorded teacher questions and learner replies, four features were examined: question types and their goals (proposed by R. Ellis, 1984), whether the teacher questions were in English or Japanese, evaluation of the teacher question qualities by external evaluators, and finally the teacher’s wait time after questions (described by Lightbown and Spada, 2013). As a result, two features, giving more English than Japanese questions and allowing longer wait times after teacher questions were especially found to have elicited more learner replies in English. In Study 2, the researcher focused on these two features to confirm whether they really work to increase English replies from the learners. In Study 1, the number of questions in Japanese was 6 times the number asked in English, while in Study 2, the number decreased to 2.6 times. Further, wait time increased in average from 2.3 minutes to 3.9 minutes in Study 2. Most interestingly, the learners’ replies in English increased from 25.9% in Study 1 to 48.4% in Study 2. These results clearly indicate that, besides asking questions in English, allowing sufficient wait time after teacher questions increases the number of replies in English from EFL learners.

Authors:
Tomoko Kaneko, Showa Women's University, Japan

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Tomoko Kaneko is a University Professor/Principal Lecturer at Showa Women's University in Japan

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