Display Questions in Primary School EFL Classrooms

Abstract

From a conversation analytic perspective, this paper explores the use of a teaching move whereby teachers elicit known knowledge and information from students, namely display questions (DQs). The examination of five video-recorded video data collected from Korean primary school English classrooms has shown that the use of DQs can be illustrated by various analytical criteria. This paper particularly discusses how DQs are used to elicit known information during various teacher-fronted activities, with specific regard to the differing import of the elicited information for the completion of an ongoing activity. It additionally discusses what other functions DQs simultaneously perform in various sequential and structural contexts. The paper concludes by arguing that DQs in the given setting are a critical resource for managing teacher-fronted activities and that the exhaustive categorization of DQs is not feasible given the highly context-sensitive nature of the teaching move.