Students’ Questioning in the Secondary Classroom

1. Students’ Questioning in the Secondary Classroom English 384/584 July 26, 2010

2. Introduction the Group Members Sae Thao Secondary Education Major

3. Introduction the Group Members Mike Slowinski High School English teacher

4. Introduction the Group Members Dorothy Seehausen Composition teacher

5. Introduction the Group Members Kathy Records Elementary Education Major

6. Questions • Teachers: What are the quality of questions your students have asked? • Students: What types of question have you heard in class?

7. Presentation Preview • What’s happening in the classroom (Mike) • Explain the questions sociologuistically (Dorothy) • Application and Strategies(Kathy)

8. Student Questions What’s happening in the classroom?

9. Student Passivity • Students Not Asking Questions • Electronic Vs. Face-to-Face • Thomas Good’s Passivity Model • Procedural Questions Instead of Conceptual

10. Student Passivity - Classroom Factors • Teacher domination • Peer pressure • Types of activities • Self-confidence • Unsure how to ask good questions

11. Wardhaugh’s Speech Acts The functional approach of sentences.

12. Who… Ronald Wardhaugh, professor emeritus University of Toronto “Talk and Action” An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (2006)

13. What… • According to Wardhaugh… • Conversations not only make statements, they perform actions in the world • Establish friendships • Achieve cooperation • Create a foundation for future interactions

14. An example… • Constative utterances: “I had a busy day today.” • Connected with events or happenings. • Ethical propositions: • “Thou shalt not kill.” • Serve as guidelines to behavior in some world or another.

15. For our purpose… • The Performative utterance: • For example: “I do.” Not only saying but doing something if certain real-world conditions are met.

16. J. L Austin’s Five categories… • Performatives • Verdictives • Giving a verdict, estimate, grade, or appraisal • “Guilty as charged.” • “You got an A on your test.” • Exercitives • Exercising of powers, rights, or influences • “I pronounce you husband and wife.” • “Congratulations! You have just graduated from college.”

17. Austin’s Five categories… • Commissives • Promising or undertaking, announcing an intention • “I hereby bequeath” • “I intent to teach the best way I know how.” • Behabitives • Apologizing, congratulating, blessing, cursing, or challenging • “I apologize” • “I challenge you to learn.”

18. Austin’s Five categories… • Expositives • Refers to how one fits an utterance into an argument or exposition • “I argue, I reply, I assume…” • “I argue in favor of my learning outcomes.”

19. And so… • A speech act… • In some way changes the conditions that exist in the world. • For example: • “I sentence you to five years in jail.” • “I sentence you to two hours of detention.” • “Hello. How are you?” (friendly) • “You jerk!” (not so friendly)

20. True/False • A speech act is neither true nor false in itself. • However, these claims may be made about its having been done.

21. Sociolinguist Dell Hymes • Hymes' components of a speech event: • Setting- scene situation • Participants- Speaker, Receiver, other • Ends- outcomes and goals • Act sequences- form and content • Key- manner • Instrumentalities- Channel, code • Norms- of behavior and interpretation • Genre- style, e.g. lecture, chat

22. Wardhaugh says… “Once we begin to look at utterances from the point of view of what they do, it is possible to see every utterance as a speech act of one kind or other, that is, as having some functional value which might be quite independent of the actual words used and their grammatical arrangement.”

23. Laver and Trudgill… “Being a listener to speech is not unlike being a detective. The listener…has to construct, from an assortment of clues, the affective state of the speaker and a profile of his identity.”

24. Communication Model

25. A final word • “All the world is a stage, and we are the players!” • Wardhaugh

26. The Critical Thinker “If good thinkers are good questioners then are good questioners good thinkers?” (King, 13) Inspiring Student Inquiry Application

27. The Critical Thinker What is Critical Thinking? "Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action” (Scriven)

28. The Critical Thinker Introduction Skeptical but open-minded Looks at different points of view Values fair-mindedness Respects evidence & reasoning Respects clarity & precision Will change positions when reasoning leads them to

29. How to Build Your Own Critical Thinker Teaching How to Ask Questions Question Stems (refer to handout) Semantics & Syntax Strategies Reciprocal Peer Questioning Reader’s Questions Conference-Style Learning

30. Inspiring Student Inquiry Cooperative Learning Higher achievement & greater productivity More caring, supportive & committed relationships Greater psychological health, social competence & self-esteem (Kagan) Examples…

32. Work Cited Ciardiello, Angelo. “Did You Ask a Good Question Today? Alternative Cognitive and Metacognitive Strategies.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. 42.3 (Nov. 1998): 210-220. EBSCOhost. Polk Library, UW-Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WI. 23 July 2010. Good, Thomas, Ricky Slavings, Kathleen Hobson Harel, and Hugh Emerson. “Student Passivity: A Study of Question Asking in K-12 Classrooms.” Sociology of Education. 60 (July 1987): 181-199. EBSCOhost. Polk Library, UW-Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WI. 23 July 2010. < http://www.harding.edu/dlee/bloom.pdf> (21 July 2010). Hymes, Dell. Foundations of Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1974 Kagan, Spencer. Cooperative Learning. San Clemente: Kagan Publishing, 1994. King, Allison. “Designing the Instructional Process to Enhance Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum.” Teaching of Psychology 22 (1995): 13-17. Scriven, Michael and Richard Paul. “Defining Critical Thinking: A Draft Statement for the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking.” (1996) Available <http://www.criticalthinking.org/University/univlibrary/library.nclk > (21 July 2010). Underwood, Marion K. and Rebecca L. Wald. “Conference-Style Learning: A Method for Fostering Critical Thinking with Heart.” Teaching of Psychology 22 (1995): 17-21. Wardhaugh, R. (2008) An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 5th Edition, Blackwell Publishing, MA