Classroom interaction and teachers’ uptake in response to teachers’ referential and display questions in EFL setting

One extensive strategy used for interaction in language classroom is teacher questioning. The types of questions used by teachers may very likely affect both the quality and quantity of the classroom interaction. In spite of the large number of students participating in EFL classes, there are few descriptive evidence on teacher talk in Iranian university English classrooms. This qualitative/quantitative study as a classroom research focused on two question types, display and referential to explore the questioning types and elicited responses by observing recurring patterns of questioning behavior and their interactive effects through non-participant observation. The audio-recorded data were transcribed using Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974) conventions. The findings revealed that the two most common and efficient questioning types used were probing and code-switching indicating that the use of different types of teachers’ questions does not guarantee the responses elicitation. Put differently, attention must be paid to questioning strategies that can serve as good techniques to elicit responses and promote interaction.