Teachers’ use of Bloom’s higher order questions in class to augment EFL learners’ listening comprehension and critical thinking ability

The current emphasis on questioning techniques has inspired many EFL teachers to explore the impact of applying different pedagogical teaching strategies on the enhancement of thinking skills. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the influence of using higher order questioning technique on the listening comprehension achievement and critical thinking ability of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. To reach this end, 40 participants in 4 intact classes in Kish Air Language institute in Mashhad were selected and divided in two groups to be assigned into experimental and control group. The experimental group received higher order questions based on Bloom’s Taxonomy classification for 12 sessions. A pretest and a posttest of English listening comprehension test of TOEFL (TOEFL PBT) and California Critical Thinking Skill Test (CCTST) were administrated in both groups. 2 Independent sample t-tests were utilized to examine the data. Sample t-tests were run to compare the experimental and the control group means on the pretest and posttest of listening comprehension and critical thinking tests. The results surmised that there was a statistically significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores regarding listening comprehension and critical thinking in the experimental group. The results imply that using higher order questions as an instructional technique can enhance learners’ listening comprehension achievement and critical thinking ability.

O zadawaniu pytań na lekcji języka polskiego. Studium przypadku

The article presents the results of qualitative and quantitative analysis of questions asked during a single Polish language lesson. It consists of two main parts. The first presents and comments on the results of the teacher’s questions analysis, the second ‒ questions asked by students. The concept of Bogusław Skowronek was used, who distinguished four types of questions in his classification: 1) reassuring-instrumental; 2) substantive; 3) about the meta-didactic function; 4) not related to the classroom situation. The first two categories were specified in more detail by Elizabeth Perrott’s proposition, which distinguishes between guiding questions and questions for clarification among reassuring-instrumental questions, while she divides substantive questions according to the type of thought process launched during the answer and indicates lower-order and higher-order questions. The text ends with a summary containing not very optimistic conclusions.

THE PRACTICE AND CHALLENGES OF IMPLEMENTING CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS IN EFL TEACHERS QUESTIONING BEHAVIOR

The development of critical thinking is closely related to the questions asked by teachers as the teachers higher-order questions are cognitively demanding to promote students critical thinking. The purposes of this study are to investigate how critical thinking was implemented in EFL teachers questions in the classroom and the challenges faced by EFL teachers in integrating critical thinking questions. In addition, this study also investigated students reasons for non-response to particular questions asked by teachers. Applying mixed-method research design, the data were collected from classroom observation, interview, questionnaire and documentations. The research participants were two English teachers and 229 number of students of year 8. The results showed that the most dominant questions asked by the two English teachers were in Lower-order questions (78,8%), while the Higher-order questions were only (21,2%) questions. Second, the challenges faced by teachers were students intelligence has yet to reach the level of higher-order thinking, unconducive-classroom environment, teachers creativity itself, parental involvement and students lack of vocabulary. Third, dealing with the reason for students non-response in particular questions asked by teachers, there were some reasons, such as students are afraid of making mistakes, they could not put ideas into words, and lack of vocabularies. In conclusion, the teachers faced various challenges in implementing critical thinking questions in the classroom.

Questions for Assessing Higher-Order Cognitive Skills: It's Not Just Bloom’s

We present an exploratory study of biologists’ ideas about higher-order cognition questions. We documented the conversations of biologists who were writing and reviewing a set of higher-order cognition questions. Using a qualitative approach, we identified the themes of these conversations. Biologists in our study used Bloom's Taxonomy to logically analyze questions. However, biologists were also concerned with question difficulty, the length of time required for students to address questions, and students’ experience with questions. Finally, some biologists demonstrated an assumption that questions should have one correct answer, not multiple reasonable solutions; this assumption undermined their comfort with some higher-order cognition questions. We generated a framework for further research that provides an interpretation of participants’ ideas about higher-order questions and a model of the relationships among these ideas. Two hypotheses emerge from this framework. First, we propose that biologists look for ways to measure difficulty when writing higher-order questions. Second, we propose that biologists’ assumptions about the role of questions in student learning strongly influence the types of higher-order questions they write.