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.
