Asking short-answer questions.

One of the most common assessment methods that the participants implemented in their classroom, was asking short-answer questions orally. These questions were almost always created by the teachers and did not come from the textbook or worksheets. These oral questions seem to serve multiple purposes: monitoring student understanding, moving the lesson forward, eliciting information from students, evaluating instruction, and, for some teachers, managing the classroom. The participants used this method in both ESP and GE courses.

As for the participants’ understanding of this method, it was challenging to determine the precise functions of short-answer questions based on teacher reports because most participants did not identify this method as part of their assessment practices. In the post-observation interviews, I selected some segments in which the teacher asked short-answer questions. A few participants, such as Mona and Hajar, identified asking such questions as part of their assessment practices. Other participants, such as Latifa and Dana, perceived asking such questions as part of their teaching practices, and they did not label this practice as assessment.

The first and main purpose of asking short-answer questions was to check student understanding and to evaluate teaching. Mona referred to this strategy in the initial interview as “concept-checking questions.” She considered this method as the most vital of her practices; she was aware that it was assessment as well as a teaching-embedded practice and used it for twofold purpose: (a) for her to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching and (b) for students to assess their knowledge of a given topic:

Excerpt 26: [My assessment is] mostly concept-checking questions, that’s number one. If I want to make sure that they know a grammar point, I ask questions about it. If [students] know, then I just build upon it, we move on to the other grammar point. If not, then that’s a message to me that they need another tutorial

or another extra reinforcement for that specific grammar rule. You can also use it when it comes to instruction giving, because sometimes I give instructions and I’m not sure if they’ve understood the instructions, especially those related to exams. (Mona, II)

She believed in the effectiveness of this method because this is one of the practices she learned from CELTA.

Excerpt 27: Concept-checking questions are one of the things I learned in CELTA. This is a way to check if the students have understood the point that I was trying to illustrate. So instead of repeating again, or moving to the other point, you check whether you need to further elaborate on something, or to move on to another, because you don’t want to repeat things over and over again. At the same time you want to make sure that the students understand what you say. So these are very important questions that teachers should ask, to check if students have understood something. You ask during teaching, and you also do it when practicing some of the exercises. It’s not just checking what they’ve written as they [answer], no, you also check during teaching. (Mona, PI)

Unlike Mona, who provided a detailed explanation about the purposes and uses of short- answer questions, Hajar acknowledged using this method within instruction without identifying its purposes. She used it to address the whole class rather than to monitor individual student understanding. Although she found asking questions necessary to track students’ understanding, Hajar did not find using them to be the best method for following up on whether students had comprehended the lesson. She instead preferred to use paper-based assessments. For example, at the beginning of one of the lessons I observed, she reviewed the material from the previous lesson with students, asking the class as a whole about the grammar rule. She justified this specific practice, saying,

Excerpt 28: First of all, individual assessment among students is not very effective with us. I mean, if I ask each one in the classroom, well, I would tell some of them how good they are, but knowing how big classes we have, it’s very difficult to have oral assessment, very difficult . . . I cannot have 40 questions for 40 students; I cannot have that number of questions unless I divide the assessment for three to four lessons. (Hajar, II)

Having a large number of students thus posed an obstacle to addressing individual students, and therefore Hajar did not rely on asking short-answer questions to evaluate student understating.

Other participants, such as Dana did not identify asking short-answer questions as an assessment, but as an instruction embedded assessment. I observed that throughout one of her

classes she used short-answer questions to address the class as a whole rather than asking each individual student. In reference to this specific segment, I asked Dana whether she addressed the whole class using short-answer questions deliberately or not, and she replied,

Excerpt 29: I guess, because [pause]—honestly, I’m analyzing myself now, I don’t know. But I think the only thing is that here, when I was asking and the whole class is actually responding, it means, at that moment, I was hoping that all of them understood what was going on. (Dana, PI)

When Dana listened to a few recorded segments in which she used short-answer questions, she mentioned that the purpose was to ensure that students understood the previous lesson. She added that this was simply part of her teaching strategy.

The second purpose of asking short-answer questions, which I observed all participants using, was to elicit information and move the lesson forward. Hajar, Nadia, and Najla asked short-answer questions when explaining a new lesson. For example, in one session I observed, when Leila came across new vocabulary in the paragraph, she used short-answer questions to check students’ knowledge of vocabulary. She did not report on the purpose of asking these questions, but it seems she used them to explain the paragraph and to move the lessons forward. For answers, she depended only on those few students who provided the correct definition and moved on with the lesson. However, if one student provided the wrong answer, she would stop and explain the meaning of the word with examples.

The following example of the use of such questions is taken from Najla’s class. She wrote grammar rules on the board and asked students some short questions that seemed intended to check students’ understanding of a previous lesson before moving to on a new topic.

N: We said there are three things that we have to take care of when we are selecting the noun. I said we have to make sure, for example, when we’re talking about Sara, we refer to her as . . . [looking at student for the purpose of getting an answer].

S: Gender?

N: Gender, yes [writing the answer on the white board] . . . Also? S: The number.

N: The number [writing on the board]. S: Subject or object.

A number of participants (Nadia and Hajar) seem to have used short-answer questions for class management, particularly in the GE classes I observed. Hajar did not use assessment only for monitoring student understanding or eliciting information during instruction; in both GE and ESP classes, she appeared to use short-answer questions to manage the classrooms. When she was asking students short questions, she appeared to be paying attention to those not

participating. For example, when she was asking students some short-answer questions, she called on a particular student to grab her attention asking her, “Fatma, are you following us?” in a friendly tone. In the post-observation interview, she explained that she was monitoring those students who were not participating and called on them to provide answers. When asked about a specific segment in which she directed questions to the whole class, she replied:

Excerpt 30: Yes, [short-answer questions are] to address the whole class, and I usually ask a person who I think is the least person who was giving me her attention. Because what I was doing was that I was trying to give them a new piece of information, and I have noticed that two or three of them were not giving me their attention. So what I’m doing is that I’m addressing the whole class in order not to put those two or three to embarrass them. I always do that. When, for example, if Mariam is not giving me her attention, I would say, “Yes, class, we have new thing today, all right, Mariam? Could you tell us so and so?” So I’m not addressing Mariam only to avoid embarrassment. (Hajar, PI)

Several participants, such as Leila and Najla, in ESP and GE courses used short-answer questions to scaffold learners during instruction. For example, I observed that Leila scaffolded learners during assessments in her GE and ESP classes using short-answer questions, especially in the grammar and in reading lessons. When she was answering the grammar questions along with students on the compound nouns, if any student gave the wrong answer, she asked several short-answer questions on the same rule to indicate that the student should revise her answers allowing the student to reach the right answer by herself:

N: Request is singular or plural? S: [Silence]

N: [Directing the question to all students] The word request. Is it singular or plural? S: Singular.

N: [directing the comment to the student] Request is singular, so do you choose this or these? Let me give you an example. If you say a chair, do you choose this or these before it?

N: Is it because it is singular or plural? S: Singular.

N: So, for request, will you choose this or these? S: This.

N: Yes, this, because request is singular.

She also asked students who gave the right answer to justify their answers (e.g., “Why did you choose this answer?”). She said that when students provided the right answers, she usually asked them to justify their answers to make sure that the student did not guess the answer, stating, “because some girls bring a used book that has the answers already written, and when they answer, I also want to make sure that it is their own answer” (Leila, PI).

In terms of teacher role in planning and using this method, asking short-answer questions, for example, occurred at the moment of instruction. Those questions often were not planned ahead of time. The teacher held the central role in directing questions to the students for different purposes. Students in all the classes I observed played a passive role and tended to agree with what the teacher asked for or said. None of the classes I observed incorporated discussion; the teachers only asked short-answer clarification questions.

The teacher role in monitoring this type of assessment was the same across all the participants. After asking short-answer questions, they listened to students’ answers carefully and when the whole class went silent, this was a sign for them to explain with the same point with more examples and to illustrate her point on the board. Mona reported: “If they’re not responding, then I know that they definitely don’t know what I’m talking about. So I’d like to modify the teaching and re-teach everything again” (Mona, PI). Hajar tried to monitor individual students during short-answer question assessment and she tried to ensure that the whole class was engaged by noting student facial expressions. She called the names of a few students who were silent, looked confused, and/or were not paying attention. Although she did not direct

questions to those students whose names she called, instead she tried to engage the whole class by calling some students during the explanation of the lesson. For this segment, Hajar reported,

Excerpt 31: To address the whole class, this is one way to attract their attention, and I usually ask a person who I think is the least person who was giving me her attention. Because what I was doing, I was trying to give them a new piece of information, and I have noticed that two or three of them were not giving me their attention, so I’m addressing the whole class in order not to put those two or three to embarrass them. I always do that. When, for example, if let’s say Sara is not giving me her attention, I would say, “Yes, class, we have new thing today. All right, Sara, could you tell us such and such?” So I’m not telling Sara only to avoid embarrassment. (Hajar, PI)