Use of questions as a form of interaction in the Italian EMI setting

Abstract

Questions play a fundamental role in the interaction between students and teachers. In English-medium instruction (EMI) classes, the strategic use of questions can strongly influence not only the learning process regarding content, but also the active participation of students, and consequently the development of their interaction skills, thereby allowing them to deploy higher-order thinking skills, which are particularly important in higher education. Online teaching, which has come to the forefront during the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has made lecturer–student interaction even more challenging. The present paper seeks to frame questions as a potential source of interaction in EMI and to qualitatively compare questions produced by lecturers in face-to-face and online lectures. First, it will categorize questions as referential, display, or procedural, looking into their implications and potential in terms of both language and content processing and learning. It will then illustrate examples of the use of questions in four EMI lectures, two face-to-face lectures and two online, from four different disciplines, which were transcribed, analysed and compared. Results reveal differences in the distribution of questions across the two learning methods and shed light on the interactional style used in traditional and online EMI lectures.