Republic of the Philippines

PHILIPPINE NORMAL UNIVERSITY

National Center for Teacher Education
College of Graduate Studies and Teacher Education Research
Taft Avenue, Corner Ayala Avenue, Manila, Philippines

ELT 507: Research Methods in Language

Concept Paper

Effects of Teachers’ Questioning Techniques on Learners’ Communicative Competence in

the ESL contexts

Introduction

In an increasingly globalized world where culture and identity becomes quite an issue, the

need to speak what is known to be the intercontinentally recognized language, English is getting

more and more pressing among individuals. In the Philippines, English has gained high prestige

for the past few years despite the pervasiveness of multilingualism. Indeed, a recent report

published by Business English Index (2014) reveals that the Philippines is the world’s best country

in business English proficiency in not just one but two consecutive years. However, this is not

enough to cover what the country is hiding behind the back of its academic pursuit. The fact that

the quality of education in the country is constantly deteriorating is rather alarming. This problem

is not only seen among elementary and secondary graduates but also the college ones. According

to the Professional Regulatory Commission (PRC), a number of passers of board examinations in

all fields of endeavor continue to decline each year. This encompassing status quo of the Philippine
education can probably be traced back to the low academic performance in the early elementary

and secondary levels, and what is engulfing is that English language proficiency has almost always

been the root cause of the problem. Proficiency in English language is a good predictor of success

in academic achievement (Ghenghesh, 2015; Sahragard, Baharloo & Soozandehfar, 2011; Fakeye

& Ogunsiji, 2009; Butler & Castellon-Wellington, 2004; Vinke & Jochems, 1993; Graham, 1987).

Additionally, the paradigm shift made in the Philippine educational system which is having to

strictly implement the K-12 curriculum program has posed a lot of tremendous challenges among

English teachers at the workplace. As the program aims itself at wholly preparing students for

tertiary education, training them to join workforce after years of senior high school, and developing

skill competency necessary in the global job market, demands on the role of English teachers have

increased quite substantially.

On his presentation, Teaching English in the K-12 in 2013, Dr. Carlo Magno, a faculty of

De La Salle University shared a philosophy highlighting that language is central to the peoples'

intellectual, social and emotional development and has an essential role in all key learning areas.

Here, he pointed out that proficiency in the language enables people to access, process and keep

abreast of information, to engage with the wide and more diverse communities. It follows that

learning outcomes must be geared toward communicative competence and multiliteracies.

Communicative competence would enable students to develop a wide array of communicative

functions from linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse to strategic competence. Whereas,

multiliteracies would instigate on students the ability to appreciate and be sensitive to sociocultural

diversity and understand that the meaning of any form of communication depends on context,

purpose and audience.

 Those being said, it is, therefore, significant to look back into the four corners of the

classroom where English is used and best practiced, exploring how teachers encourage interaction

through communication and more importantly to what extent their questioning techniques

influence the communicative competence among English as second language learners.

Specifically, this study will seek to provide answers to the following research question:

1. What are the teachers’ questioning techniques in English as a Second Language

contexts?

2. How do these teachers’ questioning techniques affect the communicative competence

of the ESL learners?

3. What are the best teachers’ questioning techniques that can be employed to improve

the communicative competence of the ESL learners?

Methodology

The study will make use of experimental-quantitative research design. The participants will

be English as a Second Language Teachers who are teaching oral communication subject at the

Senior High School level. Using Slovin’s formula (n=N/1 + Ne²) with 0.05 as the Margin of Error,

the sample size of the study will be established. Simple random sampling technique will be

employed to determine the sample (participants) of the study.