Asking questions is a primary method for EFL teachers to maintain control over classroom discourse, carry out their instructional materials, check students’ understanding level, and create interaction with the class. However, previous literature has found that EFL teachers tended to conduct their classes with a predominant proportion of pseudo-questions (Kao & Weng, forthcoming), the answers to which were known by the teachers and even by some members of the class. For example, when the EFL teacher asks, “What time is it?” by pointing at a clock displayed on the board, the teacher is not interested in knowing the actual time (and most likely the teacher and the class know the time). The teacher is checking if the students know how to report the time in English. Our students are accustomed to such types of evaluation questions, which rarely occur in real communication.

Outside the classroom, asking fake questions violates the “maxim of quality” according to Grice’s principle of corporation in conversation (Grice, 1989, p. 27). Grice stated that the addresser of a question in real social context seeks for new and unknown information from the addressee, and so the addressee is expected to give a true and sincere answer. The keys in Grice’s principle are the conversational context where the talk takes place and the role each participant assumes. Thus, when a teacher asks a student the time after class on the corridor, the student will naturally look at his or her own watch and report the real time, with the assumption that the teacher does not have this information and really needs it. The after-class corridor context creates a different relation between the teacher and the student with different purposes of speaking.

In drama, teachers and students take imaginative roles to unveil unknown situations. Questioning plays an important role in helping teachers, in-role or out-of-role, to “establish atmosphere, feed in information, seek out the interests of the group, determine the direction of the drama, give status to the participants, draw the group together to confront specific problems, (and) challenge superficial thinking” (O’Neill & Lambert, 1986, p. 142). In addition to facilitating teaching, many frequently used drama techniques, such as hot-seating, tableaux, and mime, require participants, usually the students, to ask questions of the characters in focus. These questions aim to seek new information to fill in the information gaps. Thus, fake questions are unlikely to occur.

Not much is known about the characteristics of questioning in EFL classrooms using process-oriented drama activities. This is partly because collecting and analyzing dynamic classroom discourses of drama activities is a difficult and time-consuming task, and partly because process drama techniques are not widely known and thus rarely implemented by EFL professionals. As drama advocates, EFL teachers, and language researchers ourselves, we felt an urge to document and analyze how teachers and students use different questioning techniques to build up drama activities on the one hand, and to develop language proficiency on the other.

THE TEACHERS-AS-RESEARCHERS DISCOURSE STUDY

In 2007, we were invited to design and team-teach a three-week intensive summer course to 30 college students of low to intermediate proficiency at Tainan University of Technology, Taiwan. The course incorporated applied drama techniques, process drama, and reader’s theater to help the EFL students develop communicative ability in English. We took this opportunity to conduct a teacher-as-researcher study. All the class sessions were video- and audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Both the teachers’ and the students’ questions were identified from the data, and the question functions were analyzed with a taxonomy proposed by Tsui (1992) and modified by Kao and Weng (forthcoming). The question function taxonomy includes the following: inform, confirm, agree, commit, repeat, clarify, pseudo, and understanding check. Tsui (1992) proposed that these question functions are equally important in conducting natural communication; interestingly, Kao and Weng (forthcoming) found in their study that up to 48.6 percent of the total questions asked by the four EFL teachers, native or nonnative, were pseudo, and 18.6 percent of the questions were used to check student understanding. Other types of functions, especially inform questions, that are looking for real information were rarely used in the four language classrooms observed. Thus, we would like to find out how question functions were used by the teachers and the students in general, and by the teachers when they were in-role and out-of-role in particular, in our drama-oriented EFL classroom.

RESULTS

Comparing the types of questions raised by the teachers and the students in the study, we found that the teacher made use of all eight question functions, while the students used only confirm (65%) and inform (35%) functions in their questions. The students usually used these two functions to confirm their interpretation and assumption about the scenes and to ask the meaning of new words occurring in other participants’ speeches. The teachers designated about half of their total questions to seek new information (i.e., inform questions, 49.4%), while applying the other seven functions more evenly. The extensive use of inform questions from the teachers indicates that asking real questions to elicit new information from the students was a primary instructional goal in this classroom. This phenomenon makes the drama-oriented EFL classroom resemble real-life communication more than that used in traditional EFL classrooms, such as the ones reported by Kao and Weng (in press).

Comparing how the teachers used different types of question functions in conducting the class with or without dramatic roles, the analysis shows that inform questions were the most frequent function found in the teachers’ utterances in either situation (39.7% in-role vs. 56.6% out-of-role). The commit functions were preferred by the teachers when taking a role (16.4%) than out-of-role (2%). A commit question, such as “Can you turn on the light?” requires an action (i.e., to switch on the light), rather than just a verbal reply, such as “Sure, I can.” This is a way to make demands more politely in realistic situations. The analysis shows that when the teachers were out-of-role, the demand of action was more often carried by imperative sentences, such as, “Turn on the light, please” in this classroom. However, when the teachers were in-role, they used more commit questions, which more closely resembles real communication. Thus, speaking with dramatic roles seems to enable the teachers to speak more authentically in the classroom.

The clarify function was also frequently used by the teachers within a role (9.6%) or without a role (11.1%), when confusion occurred in the students’ speeches due to the students’ insufficient linguistic knowledge. A relatively high percentage of understanding check function was found when the teachers were in-role (13.7%), but not when they were out-of-role (2%). Since this group of learners did not have drama experience and their listening proficiency was also low, the teachers needed to check if the students followed the progress of drama from time to time. Repeat functions were rarely found from the teachers with (1.4%) or without (6.1%) a dramatic role; this is also true for agree question function (4.1% in-role vs. 0% out-of-role). Interestingly, though pseudo-questions were used by the teachers, regardless of their roles in the activities (12.3% in-role vs. 14.1% out-of-role), this question function took a much less important role in the two teachers’ speeches in this classroom.

The study indicates that the dramatic roles enabled the teachers to make use of a wider range of question functions to create more authentic communication than in traditional EFL classrooms. It is because the drama teachers have more freedom, linguistically and pedagogically, in applying questioning techniques with their masks of dramatic roles. Most interestingly, the students in the study gradually realized that the progress of the scene depended on their answers so they were eager to respond to and raise questions.

AN EXAMPLE OF TAKING IN- AND OUT-OF-ROLE STATES FOR LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING

Every one of us takes many roles, concurrently or separately, in the real world: an employee (or an employer), a colleague, a professional (or a layperson), a child (and/or a parent), a customer (or a service provider), a friend, or even just a passerby. Accordingly, we modify the registers and tones of speech to represent the roles we are taking when communicating with our interlocutors in correspondent contexts. Unfortunately, an EFL teacher usually assumes one fixed role, the teacher in the classroom, which defines a fixed relationship with the other participants (i.e., the students). Both the fixed role and relationship prevent the teacher and the students from experiencing the flexibility of adjusting speech modes inside the classroom, which makes classroom discourse rather static and mono-phased. Drama helps to form meaningful contexts for the teacher and the students to take multiple roles, and thus to assume different relationships, in building the conversation. By alternating their roles between the teacher (i.e., out-of-role) and other imaginative roles (i.e., in-role), EFL teachers can conduct the class within more authentic contexts for communication.

In one short drama used in this classroom, called the “Mysterious Box,” the teacher handed over a tightly sealed metal box to the students sitting in a circle. She invited the students to observe and touch the box, and then taking her regular language teacher role, she asked the students to describe the box, one after another. As the students took turns describing the shape, colors, and patterns of the box, the teacher modeled their sentences and word choices with linguistic help. This activity went on with a fixed teacher-student relationship and rather controlled discourse mode until one student shook the box and heard noise from inside. The teacher asked the class what it could be.

One student said, “Money!” and the others immediately rejected this guessing because “the box was small.” More guesses, such as “gold,” “ring,” and “diamonds,” were given by the class. Then a student tried to open the box, but was stopped by the class, because some had noticed a label at the bottom of the box, reading “Do Not Open!” This student said, “There is a secret in the box.” This is the turning point of the activity, which empowered the teacher to switch from her teacher’s role to other imaginative ones to create dramatic scenes.

The teacher first assumed the role of a police chief and addressed the class: “My dear colleagues, you are our best investigators. Just now, you have all observed the box which was turned into the station by a villager this morning. He found it in the forest outside the village. He heard that a woman was reported missing last night and thought the box might be related to the case.” During the brief introduction, the students realized they had become police investigators. Their new role empowered them to ask questions of the teacher such as “Where is the man who found the box?”, “What is the name of the woman?” and “How old is she?” Interestingly, they also adjusted their tone from the submissive students to authoritative police officers. The police chief replied, “Unfortunately, we don’t know. You will have to go out and interview the villagers.” The chief police suggested, “Let’s brain-storm what questions we should ask.” The investigators proposed many possible questions to be asked.

Then the teacher resumed her teacher role and divided the class into two halves; one half were police investigators while the other half were villagers. The students were paired up to carry out the interview; the policemen asked questions and noted down the information given by the villagers, who could freely create stories and additional characters. After 10 minutes, the police investigators were asked back by the chief of police. They sat in a small circle to report the information gathered from their interviews, while the villagers sat in a bigger circle as the audience listening to the reports. Interestingly, when the police investigators were reporting, the audience occasionally made corrections about the reports.

Contradictions of characters, their relations, and events occurred because the pairs worked independently; for example, two villagers claimed to be the daughters of the missing woman. When such contradiction happened, the chief of police (i.e., the teacher in-role) asked the investigators (i.e., the students-in-role) to decide or rationalize the information. She asked, “Isn’t this weird? You both interviewed the woman’s daughter!” One audience from the outer circle commented, “They are different.” The police chief clarified, “Do you mean the woman has two daughters?” The audience agreed. Negotiation went on until the class reached a consensus about the frame of the story, characters, and relationships of the characters. The teacher, alternating between in-role and out-of-role states, facilitated the negotiation with various questioning techniques, such as informing, confirming, and clarifying.

CONCLUSION

This group of students started the course with little EFL communication experience, a passive attitude about learning English, and little faith in themselves as users of English. Drama activities created a safe, imaginative context for the students to use English to express and negotiate ideas. They were motivated to raise questions because they realized that they were part of the drama creation. Most important, they, but not the teachers, owned the stories. Three weeks was indeed a very short time for helping them progress significantly, but it was critical in changing their perceptions of the purpose of learning and using English.

Unlike traditional EFL teachers, the two teachers experienced a very challenging journey in teaching this course. They planned the drama frameworks, discussed possible linguistic elements to be included in each drama scene, and faced unknown content when they encountered the class. The teachers’ duty in this class was not to instruct on the prepared materials, but to incorporate the students’ contribution within the planned drama frameworks so as to forward the scenes. For those who would like to plan their own drama-oriented language classroom, Bowell and Heap (2001) provided comprehensive guides and strategies. O’Neill and Lambert (1986), on the other hand, demonstrated interesting theme-based drama lessons that can be adapted for different age groups and educational purposes. A helpful start on YouTube can also be found here.

Many EFL teachers might feel insecure when there are no fixed teaching materials in hand and the class does not go on as planned, but it is the unknown elements initiated by the students that make the teacher-student interaction authentic and communication meaningful. The in- and out-of-role states of the teachers and the students made the classroom even more interactive and communicative.

Will switching roles so frequently confuse the students? We asked this question to the class at the end of the course, and their answer was, “It’s fun!”

REFERENCES

Bowell, P., & Heap, B. S. (2001). Planning process drama. London, England: David Fulton Publishers Ltd.

Grice, H. P. (1989). Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kao, S. -M., & Weng, W. -C. (in press). “Do you understand?”: An analysis of native and non-native EFL teachers’ questioning patterns at a Taiwanese cram school. Asian EFL Journal.

Kao, S. –M., & O'Neill, C. (1998). Words into worlds: Learning a second language through process drama. Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing.

O’Neill, C., & Lambert, A. (1986). Drama structure: A practical handbook for teachers. London, England: Hutchinson.

Tsui, A. M. B. (1992). A functional description of questions. In M. Coulthard (Ed.), Advances in spoken discourse analysis (pp. 162-82). London, England: Routledge.

Shin-Mei Kao received her PhD from the Ohio State University and is an associate professor in the Foreign Languages and Literature Department, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. She is interested in the teacher-student interaction patterns in EFL classrooms with innovative teaching strategies. She coauthored with Cecily O’Neill, Words into worlds: Learning a second language through process drama.

Gary Carkin is a full professor of TESOL at the Institute for Language Education, Southern New Hampshire University, where he teaches in the graduate TEFL program. His areas of interest include pronunciation, neuro-pedagogy, and teaching language through drama.