Alternative Questions: Inviting student to talk in an EFL Speaking Class

This study aims to analyze the way one teacher facilitates extended student talk in an English as a foreign language (EFL) Listening and Speaking Course at tertiary level via conversation analytic perspective. Eliciting extended student talk is one of the main pedagogical agendas of the language course and the language teacher employs varied interactional and pedagogical resources to accomplish this goal. Among various resources, this paper will focus on one particular question design: alternative questions. In previous conversation analytic studies, alternative question is found to be used as conversational repair achieving other initiated self repair (Koshik, 2005). In this study, we aim to analyse an undescribed function of this type question in this particular educational setting. The data were collected from an EFL class at a private university in Turkey. Listening and Speaking course for Turkish computer engineering students was audio-recorded for nine classroom hours over five weeks. The data was transcribed using Jefferson transcription system (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998) and analysed employing conversation analysis. Micro-analytic investigation of classroom interaction revealed that the teacher initiates alternative questions to encourage student participation and invite them to voice their opinions. Via alternative questions, the teacher gives two or more options to the class and invites them to choose one. This question type projects student contribution designed as one word answer and in the following sequence, the teacher keeps eliciting student talk via contingent questioning. It can be claimed that alternative questions help teacher to open space for student participation and enable her to involve learners in the following speaking task.