International Science and Technology Journal

Teacher questions perform a significant role in opening and maintaining interaction within the classroom. Furthermore, questions play an important part in designing and constructing the three-part sequence. Accordingly, they have a great impact on student participation. Some questions invite extended talk and students are able to produce substantial long responses, while others invite minimal responses. This article aimed to show how sequentially teachers design and construct the “known answer questions” and “unknown answer questions” in the three part sequence, also how students’ responses orient to the teacher’s questions. Conversation analysis (CA) methodology (Hosoda, 2016; I. Koshik, 2002b; Seedhouse, 2005b),was used to analyse and investigate sequentially these questions. The participants were 30 adult EFL learners undertaking an academic English course at higher education.The class was held by two native English language teachers, one male and one female both teachers were teaching on the Pre-Sessional English Programme (PSP). The findings show that “known answer questions” allow for brief answers and hence restrict student participation, despite the fact that the teacher constantly rearranges and reformulates his/her questions in different formats in the ongoing sequence to promote participation. On the other hand, “unknown answer questions” provide an extended discussion and substantial responses from students, allowing them to speak freely. Such questions are non-testing and received more elaborate responses from students. Keywords: unknown answer questions” , Conversation analysis, classroom talk. “Known answer questions