Open Sesame! The Search for Magic "Tell me about..." Questions

[kellogg]

Analysis of Learner's Language Transition and Teacher's Questions:

Strategies to encourage learner's creative constructions.

I. INTRODUCTION

The following data is analyzed to find evidence of transitions in learners' language by examining teacher-student exchanges. Especially, learner's language transition from vocabulary and fragments to whole sentences and creative constructions will be focused. Moreover, I would like to locate teacher's questions which effected learners to choose to produce creative constructions. In the end, this will lead to strategies that the teacher can use to encourage learners to produce more whole sentences and creative constructions.

Munjeong clearly states her key problem and it's a key problem for integrating the language of exposure and the language of use. How do learners go from using a language of vocabulary and fragments and being exposed to a language of whole sentences (and creative constructions, too, because teachers do not just memorize all the sentences they use in class) to using a language of whole sentences and creative constructions?

A very good choice. A brilliant choice. In fact this was really what 이민경 셈 chose as her thesis topic: she wanted to see how teacher questions affected learner choice of noun phrases, and particularly articles.

Now, the problem that Minkyeong ran into was that after we did the study (it was a VERY big study, involving analysis of over 2,500 turns of talk) we discovered that there was really only a very weak relationship between teacher questions and the use of plurals and articles. Even that very weak relationship seems to depend very much on the type of lesson (e.g. "Listen and Do", or "Listen and Answer", etc.).

Munjeong is very brave. She wants to find which questions affect learner choices and lead to whole sentences and creative constructions. But the difference between bravery and foolishness is really this: the brave person has to admit the chance of failure, and see it clearly. So we have to accept, before we begin to look, that we may never find the wonderful questions that will magically create this transition.

Examined data are performed by one Korean teacher and strategically extracted from two different grade six lessons: Lesson 12. "Will you help me, please?", "Listen and Repeat" sequence and Lesson 2. "Is this York Street?", "Let's Role Play" sequence. Under these two sequences, three categories of exchanges are discussed: Getting attention, Giving information, and Checking integration.

II. LISTEN AND REPEAT

In Lesson 12. "Will you help me, please?", the teacher and students are going to listen to and repeat the dialogue from the textbook. The class mainly consists of conversations between the teacher and students. In the beginning, the teacher is talking about pictures to get students' attention. Then she plays video without any sound and makes students guess what characters said. Finally, the teacher checks integration by asking different questions about the video.

This description sounds like Look and Listen, not Listen and Repeat. However, when we look carefully at the data, we see that Munjeong is right.

What are the differences? Well, in Look and Listen, we get ONE BIG picture, and the emphasis is really on CONTEXT, because we're going to get an extended dialogue (sometimes ten or eleven lines).

In Listen and Repeat, we get very small pictures, and no video. Very often what happens is that we get two or three very sketchily presented situations, where the "communicative function" is presented with very small variations: the obvious purpose is to create item-based combinations, e.g.

Can you help me please? I want to make a paper airplane.

No problem.

Can you help me please? I want to make a cake.

Sure I can.

etc.

This really is different from Look and Listen. Because it is different, we really need to describe it differently.

First of all, let's examine the exchanges from 'Getting Attention' (See Table 1).

T: How many?

Ss: Two.

T: There are...?

Ss: Two.

T: Sentence, please.

S1: I see two pictures.

S2: There are two pictures.

Students answer in one word ("Two") to the teacher's question, "How many pictures do you see?".

Although there are two whole, complete sentences, they are sentences about pictures and not about the communicative function of the lesson. So while this may be a creative construction the FIRST time the children do this, it is probably NOT a creative construction here!

However, our teacher is not finished yet.

T: What are they doing?

S6: Dating!

T: Dating? Ah, maybe they are.

S7: Kill!

T: Huh? Kill? Kill who?

S7: No, wedding, wedding!

Tr: Wedding? But does he look happy?

S7: No, hot. Tired.

Tr. Yeah, he looks hot and tired.

S8: @#$%^(In Korean)

Tr: Oh, that is good. Can you try that in English?

S8: He is tired. He go home.

Tr: Ah, he is tired so he went home.

And to 'what' questions ("What is she doing?", "What are they doing?"), students keep responding in fragments ("Finding.", "Dating").

I don't see some of this in the data, Munjeong. Where is "What is she doing?" And "Finding"?

The teacher first tries to elicit a sentence by giving hints ("There are..?"), and then urges students to produce a whole sentence ("Sentence, please", "Can you try that in English?"). Students then create a construction ("I see two pictures.") and produce a whole sentence ("There are two pictures.", "He is tired. He go home.").

Even they just responded in a whole sentence, again, when the teacher said, "How many people do you see?", they replied in a short and not grammatical form ("Three.").

I don't see this in the data either.

Though they are able to produce a whole sentence, students seem to prefer (or feel no need to create one) answering in a vocabulary. This tendency can be generally observed in other exchanges and sequences as well.

And of course the children are RIGHT, and for three reasons.

First of all, the TEACHER is not speaking in full sentences. "How many?" is not a full question, and neither is "There are...?" In fact, "Sentence please!" is not a full sentence either. When someone does not speak in full sentences, it is quite normal to not respond in full sentences.

Secondly, a full sentence seems verbose, unnecessary, redundant, and even awkward here. The TEACHER is asking for information about the picture, not about the student's command of grammar.

Thirdly, our curriculum is NOT based on sentences, but on something called "communicative functions". A sentence is ONE kind of communicative function. But there are many other ways to realize communicative function, and from a TEACHING point of view, some of these are much more interesting. Look:

Tony's Uncle: I have cows, too.

Minsu: How many cows?

Tony's Uncle: Seven.

From a TEACHING point of view, "How many cows?" is more interesting than "How many cows do you have?" because it is an INTERMENTAL construction, with the grammar DISTRIBUTED in discourse. As Vygotsky says, every higher psychological function we find in the mind was once a REAL relationship between ACTUAL people: and that goes for grammar, which was once a relationship in discourse.

But Munjeong's question is a very good one. What KIND of intermental constructions lead to intramental constructions? That is the question.

Secondly, in the 'Giving Information' data(See Table 2), students produce mixture of fixed expression‎ and whole and creative sentences.

Tr: Let's check the video. I will turn off the sound. You need to guess what they are saying.(비디오를 본 후)

Tr: After watching the video, how many characters? Peoples?

Ss: Four!

TR: Who were they? Can you tell me?

Ss: Uh....Ah...

TR: Names?

Ss: Mother, father, brother, sister.

TR: Good. What are boy and girl's name? Do you know their names?

Ss: Jinho. Nami, Zeeto, Namsu.

TR: Yes, Nami and Namsu. Zeeto was from third grade.

Now, 민섭? Nami's little brother Namsu said something.

What do you think he said?

민섭: Help me.

TR: Help me? Okay. Um.. 민수. Guess what Nami said.

민수: Help me.

TR: Help me again? Alright. How about the mother?

S9: Show me the money.

TR: Show me the money? Why?

S9: Because she is mother. Mother like money.

TR: Um.. no.. I don't think so. She was doing something.

S10: Moving.

TR: Moving what?

S10: Plants. Vase.

TR: Yes. How about little Namsu? What was he doing?

S11: He is making the robot.

TR: Making the robot, good. How about Nami? What was she doing?

S9: She is solving problem.

TR: Wow, good word. She was solving the problem.

The teacher first asks closed questions ("Who were they?" "What are boy and girl's name?") and moves on to open ended questions ("Guess what Nami said." "What was he doing?"). Students answered in single word vocabulary items (Four, mother, father, Jinho, Plants.) and fixed expression‎ ("Help me.") Then they produce more whole and creative expressions. The teacher's questions are similar with 'getting attention', however, students response were more whole and creative ("Show me the money? Why?", "Because she is mother. Mother like money."/ "What was he doing?" "He is making the robot."). One reason is because learners are more inside the story. The teacher intentionally uses past tense ("What was he doing? What was she doing?" "She was solving the problem.") but students are keep producing in present tense("He is making the robot." "She is solving problem."). By doing so, she is viewing characters from outside of the story. However, she provided a video, asked their names, and make them guess about character's talk which gave students an opportunity to stay close to the story. Thus, comparing before and after watching the video, learners feel closer with characters and start connecting with their experiences ("Because she is mother. Mother like money." "She is solving problem."). Considering this is before giving any exposure to the target language, learners are creative with sentences and context as well.

Lastly, in the 'Checking Integration' data(See Table 3), students show both fragments and creative constructions as a response. Here, teacher asks checking questions about the video("Now... see if your guessing was right.... And what did father say?"). Students answer what they heard("I'm coming.", "I'm tired.", "No problem") that are fixed expressions. Then the teacher asks about character's feeling("Now, how did the father feel? What was his feeling?"). She is giving hints in fragments("Happy? Sad? Terrible?") and as a response, students reply shortly("Happy." "Tired."). The teacher then asks why. Although S11 missed articles, she understands the change of character's feelings and is able to explain the reason in a creative sentence("Um... wife and children give cookie and juice.").

Remember that Munjeong wants to find magic questions that lead children to make not only whole sentences but also creative abstract constructions.

She has certain found some whole sentences...and some creative abstract constructions too! But wait a minute!

Munjeong is arguing that there is a GAP between the tense of the question and the tense of the answer which reflects the fact that the teacher is OUTSIDE the story and the children are placing themselves inside.

I think that argument is correct. But if we say that these questions are the questions we are looking for, we have to conclude that having a gap between the language of exposure and the language of use is a GOOD thing, not a bad thing.

III. LET'S ROLE PLAY

This lesson starts with showing a video that is taken by the native teacher and students from the class. The native teacher's questions for directions can be heard. But students who were acting only moved their lips. After watching a video, students outside of the video should guess what the actors are saying. Then the teacher and a student take roles and react (re-enact?) a similar situation. That was a demonstration for a coming activity, role play. In pairs, students will discuss three categories 'who, where, what are they saying' and write a script. Finally pairs will perform a role play, and others will watch and answer teacher's questions related to the role play.

Let's take a closer look on our first category, 'Getting Attention'(See Table 4).

T: I will show you a video...

S: 아우~!! (Yelling.. almost crying..screaming...)

T: Here are the actresses and the actor, Ian teacher.

S: 보여줘요~Hurry up, teacher!

S: OH, NO! 아악!

S: 쟤네 근데 뭐 한거야?

T: Who is this?(Pointing the screen)

S: Ian teacher.

T: Yes. There are 5 actor and actresses. They will be saying something.

You can hear what Ian teacher is saying, but you cannot hear what

they are saying. You have to guess what girls are saying.

S: Korean, please! Explain Korean, please.

T: Okay. You will..

S: 맞추는 거에요?

T: Yes. You have to guess what they are saying(hands talking motion).

Teacher starts class by simple 'who' question. This 'who' question is used several times during the class. Teacher gets quick returns from students in short fragments ("Who is this?" "Ian teacher."). She only uses one type of question at this stage. After the quick question, she explains about the video. In the explaining part, sentences got much longer (about 8 times longer than "Who is this?") and some students didn't understand the instruction ("Korean, please!") and even asked back in Korean (“맞추는 거에요?”). So she paraphrase to simpler explanation ("You have to guess what they are saying"). Since she ended with explaining, there were no room for creative constructions to be built by learners. After explaining, she could have asked checking questions like "You will hear..? You have to..? to check students' understanding.

So it looks like--from this segment--the gap between the language of exposure and the language of use is not such a good thing after all!

Why not just ask:

"What are they saying?"

or even:

"Tell me about it!"

The next category is 'Giving Information' (See Table 5).

T: We are going to watch this video one more time. This time...

who, where, what(칠판에 적고)...After this video, you tell me, who is talking? where he wants to go, and what are they saying?

S: (Guessing while watching) go straight.

S: 손가락으로 4를 만드네?

T: Who is talking?

S: Ian teacher. Girl!

T: Ian teacher and ...?

S: Girl!

S: No, 2 students.

T: Ok, 2 students.

Where does he want to go?

S: Bus stop.

T: He wants to find bus stop.

Now, look one more time and guess. Guess what they are saying.

After watching the video, the teacher asks questions (who, where, what). Like before, who questions draw short answers. And while the teacher is asking in whole grammar sentences ("Who is talking?", "Where does he want to go?"), students respond in fragments ("Ian teacher.", "Bus stop."). Then she moves on to more open ended questions("Who can tell me? What is she saying?") which made students to produce more part or whole("Sorry, I don't know." "Go straight 4 blocks." "Cross the street." "Near the bank.")sentences and creative sentences("Ride bus 2004.", "롯데리아 is disappeared now.").

T: What did she say?

S: I don't know.

T: Maybe. What else?

S: Sorry, I don't know.

T: Sorry, I don't know. Good.

Teacher first said this open ended, or guessing, question with past tense("What did she say?") then soon she consists with present tense("What is she saying?"). It can be interpreted as an effort to make the story on-going and make connections with next activity, role play. Also, it can be interpreted as a change in point of view(Kellogg, D, 2010, personal communication) to stay closer inside the story. Students then produce information they gained by answering. Some are fixed expressions("Go straight.", "Turn left."), fragments("어..어..next.. next to the bank.") intra-mental constructions("What is she saying?" "I think, go straight, turn left at the corner."), or creative constructions("look round and there is a 롯데리아.").

Now Munjeong appears to change her mind. The gap between present and past tense is NOT such a good thing. And it DOES appear that when the teacher elminates the gap she gets MORE uptake. The children take words in the present tense, from the characters lips, and speak them. This doesn't happen with the past tense.

T: Who can tell me? What is she saying?

S: I think, go straight, turn left at the corner.

S: Ride bus 2004.

T: Ride a bus 2004? Okay.

S: Go straight 4 blocks.

T: Go straight 4 blocks. Good. 화면에서 손가락으로 4를 만들어서? Good.

T: Anything else? What do you think?

S: 어..어..next.. next to the bank.

T: 오~ next to the bank. Very good.

S: Near the bank. Beside the bank. Behind the bank.

T: Many prepositions, 전치사.

S: Cross the street.

T: 오~cross the street, good.

S: Between the bank and school.

T: Between the bank and school. Good.

Now it looks like Munjeong is a little closer to finding her magic questions. But they are questions that are CLOSE to the story and not DISTANCED from it.

Last category is 'Checking integration'(See Table 6). Before writing a script, the teacher and one student is acting a demo role play. This demonstration possesses many integrations. Asking to a stranger, you first need to give a sign "Excuse me." Teacher tries to teach this by not answering instantly. S2 understands the situation and gives an advice("Excuse me 해야지!"). S1 also understands("Ah, excuse me.") and asks again. Teacher then recasts("The bus stop?") and shifts answering chance("I don't know. Ask him.") to S3. Others integrated this unexpected situation and laughed together. Now S1 is fully aware of how to ask a stranger for directions, including using the article("Hello, excuse me. Where is the bus stop?"). S1 also ends the conversation properly("Thank you very much. Bye.") which shows that S1 is inside the role play.

Good. But of course inside the role play we get fixed expressions and not creative abstract constructions. So what is the next step?

In pairs, students start thinking and creating their own script. Oppose to teacher's expectation , students did not discussed with their partners in English. They would create and plan the storyline in Korean and asked each other or the teacher for English expressions. But when they started to write it down, they would examine the writing and help fixing the errors(S1 :Go straight turn right the bank..., S2: at the bank.. S1: Ah, at the bank). It is the evidence of intramental process that students are working together to complete the task.

Yes, and it's very interesting that they use Korean to operate on English. This does, of course, mean that the children too are creating their own gap between the language of exposure and the language of use.

After performing role plays, teacher observes and asks questions to check students' understanding. A pattern of the question is where, why, and what. Some answers by learners that are vocabulary items or fragments remembered from the role play they saw("Where does he want to go?" "The bank."/ "Where does she want to go?" "Hospital"/ "So what did he say?" "Sorry?"). However, to the questions that learners need to think and answer help producing creative sentences("Why?", "Steal the money./ "She got a big cut. So what did she do?" "Find map. Internet map on the phone."). 'Why' made students to consider and integrate many things; the setting, props, actions, voice tones, etc.

And even COMPLETELY new ideas like the internet map on the phone. Bravo, kids! Bravo, Munjeong.

IV. CONCLUSION

The purpose of this paper was to analyze learner's language transition by examining student-teacher exchanges. Observing two sequences, students tendency of language transition was to use both fragments and creative constructions back and forth. Even if the teacher provides full grammatical sentences, students would answer in short fragments despite their abilities to create whole sentences. And to the same what or why questions, students would sometimes answer with fragments or creative constructions. Thus, it is difficult to define student's development based on frequency of fragments or creative construction usages.

Yes! It appears that there is no magic stimulus. There is no behaviorist response to Munjeong's question. Actually, that is exactly what Munjeong found out. She found that language development is DEVELOPMENT and not learning. It's something that happens relatively independently of the teacher's questions.

Rather, I viewed on teacher's role to guide learners to produce fragments than creative sentences. Because a teacher is a bridge who is providing opportunities to make learner's to choose to produce creative constructions. So I would like to suggest strategies that teacher can consider to make students produce more creative constructions.

What Minkyeong found out was that the teacher can do this not by operating DIRECTLY on the learners' utterances with questions or modelling but rather INDIRECTLY by having them organize...role plays!

It looks like Munjeong is reaching the same conclusion.

First, a teacher's open ended questions are effective on learners to produce more creative constructions. Reviewing teacher's talk from above, we can find a trend in her questions. She tends to start with closed type questions("Who is this?", "Where does he want to go?", "How many characters?") and moves on to open ended questions("What is she saying?" "Why? Can you tell me?"). According to the analysis, students try to produce more whole and creative sentences when teacher asked open ended questions("What is she saying?" "Sorry, I don't know." "Cross the street." "Ride bus 2004." "Because she is mother."). Moreover, using both closed and open questions can be useful. For example, "Who is this? Tell me about him.", adding more open ended question after closed can be combined to further conversation.

Yes, necessary. But not necessarily sufficient. It's good. But not necessarily enough.

Moreover, teacher can lead students to be inside the story than outside of the story to produce more creative constructions. Once you are outside of the story, it is difficult to create a story("He says he wants to go to the bank."). You both should consider third persons point of view and the change of a verb. But when you are inside the story, it becomes easier("I want to go to the bank."). From the data above, students use this strategy. Even if the teacher wants to teach past tense and adhere it, students respond in present tense. And also in a motivation aspect, students are more encouraged to talk about the story after they watch or hear it. They find more connection with the characters and settings and motivated to produce creative constructions. Especially when learners have chance to do the role play and actually be the actors, they try to develop their own situation and produce creative construction to perform.

Munjeong has a good point. Learning is a dynamic activity, so what is GOOD at one point may be BAD at the next point. For example, a gap between inside the story and outside the story may be GOOD after the story is over and the children are trying to figure out what happened, but BAD at the beginning when the children are still trying to grasp the actual lines and speak them in context.

Now perhaps what this really means is that there aren't ANY questions that will ALWAYS lead to whole sentences and creative constructions. There's no "Tell me about..." or "Why?' or "open sesame" that will ALWAYS open the children's mouths and open the children's minds.

Think a minute. One of the big lessons of our class is that teachers RECONSTRUE long, difficult sentences as tall thin discourses. Perhaps the way teachers build bridges between the language of exposure and the language of use is NOT through single utterances but rather through tall thin collections of utterances. Exchanges...sequences....perhaps whole episodes are part of this.