Examining the Relationship between Classroom Questioning Techniques and Students’ Critical Engagement in ESL Higher Education Discussions Across Face-to-Face and Online Contexts through a Mixed-Methods Classroom Discourse Analysis

Abstract

The present study focuses on exploring the connection between classroom questioning strategies and critical involvement of the students in ESL higher education conversations in the context of face to face and online classrooms. The major purpose is to investigate the effects of the various forms of teacher questions on the profundity and quality of cognitive and linguistic involvement in ESL pupil during academic discourse. It is based on the fact that questioning practices are taken to be central to classroom discourse, and to the encouragement of critical thinking and especially in multilingual higher education classrooms where learners negotiate content and language. The research methodology will be a mixed-methods research design that combines a quantitative analysis with a qualitative classroom discourse analysis. Sociocultural Theory, Classroom Discourse Analysis, and the Revised Taxonomy by Bloom are used to rank theories the author uses to conceptualize questioning techniques and critical engagement. The ESL higher education classrooms provided the data in terms of the audio and video tape recordings of the face-to-face conversations, the transcripts of online discussion sessions, and the student engagement questionnaire. In the two modalities of instructions, instructors, courses, and discussion sessions were selected using purposive and comparative sampling. The results indicate that open-ended, probing, and higher-order questions are closely linked to the increased rate of critical effort of the students both in face-to-face and online settings. Face-to-face discussions encourage immediate response and instant interaction whereas online discussions allow reflection and elaborated responses. In general, the findings indicate that questioning strategies, as opposed to instructional modality, are a determining factor in the development of critical participation in ESL higher education discussion.