Abstract
This study investigated the most common mistakes university students made when formulating interrogative sentences using the ‘Wh-questions: Who, What, Whom, Which, Whose.’ The research was initiated by the researcher’s curiosity when finding out that students in IIE university (pseudonym) frequently made mistakes when trying to ask questions using the ‘Wh-question’ in almost every occasion; either in classrooms or in general lectures. The research which was conducted using descriptive qualitative method involving 60 university students as direct participants, who received some treatments found out that students’ most common mistakes were about choosing the right ‘Wh-question’ to form the question and to place every component that built the question in a correct order and the other mistakes were related to the right use of article, demonstrative, verb, an auxiliary verb, while little problem was related to a problem with diction and ability to make meaningful sentence. The study also found out that the IIE students made more mistakes than ever anticipated by Swan (1980) and that there was a close inseparable connection among all grammatical issues when composing any sentence in English.
Highlights
Question words are very important words in every kind of language especially English because conversation develops into a longer conversation and may even into a very meaningful communication with the combination of question words in it
If the teacher asked a question in which the response would need the skills for analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, the question was categorized as a higher-order question
The students should have understood the rules. This method is desired in this study because this study is aimed to straightly find out what common mistakes Indonesian students usually made when formulating interrogative sentences using ‘Question Words.’
Summary
Question words are very important words in every kind of language especially English because conversation develops into a longer conversation and may even into a very meaningful communication with the combination of question words in it. The ability to use question words is a life skill compulsory to know for a real social life anywhere. Lee (2015) stated that questioning had the greatest impact on how students think in an English classroom which eventually would develop higher order thinking skills. If a teacher asked a question to students in which the response would be giving information about general knowledge, showing comprehension, and practicing an application, the question was categorized into lower-order questions. If the teacher asked a question in which the response would need the skills for analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, the question was categorized as a higher-order question.
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