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Article published In:
Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 35:1 (2022) ► pp.65–99

The use of questions posed by professors in English and Montenegrin academic lectures

A corpus-based study

ORCID logo | University of Montenegro

Although questions are considered as important linguistic devices employed by lecturers to communicate facts and ideas to students and facilitate the learning process, they have not been a topic of extensive research. With that in mind, this paper explores the types and functions of questions asked by British and Montenegrin lecturers. It examines similarities and differences between two corpora – standard British academic corpora and a specially created corpus of Montenegrin lectures. Both quantitative and qualitative methodologies were used to conduct a contrastive analysis of lecturers’ questions. The results demonstrate that the differences in frequency, forms and functions of questions prevail over the similarities, which could be the impact of two different linguistic backgrounds and national academic cultures. The findings of this study could be useful in designing lecture-listening and note-taking courses for students in which they can get familiar with the forms and purpose of questions posed by professors. Research findings could be applied in training courses for novice lecturers and might also be useful to professors who give lectures to students with diverse linguistic backgrounds.

Keywords: English academic lectures, Montenegrin academic lectures, questions posed by professors, question forms, question functions
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and methodology
    • 2.1Corpus
    • 2.2Analytical procedure
  • 3.Results and discussion
    • 3.1Formal realisations of questions posed and answered by lecturers
      • 3.1.1Functions of formal realisations of the questions posed and answered by lecturers
        • 3.1.1.1 Wh-questions
        • 3.1.1.2Tag questions and statement+word tag (okay, right, yeah, all right)
        • 3.1.1.3 Yes/no questions
        • 3.1.1.4Multiple questions
        • 3.1.1.5Questions with a question word/phrase at the end
    • 3.2Formal realisations of questions initiating a student response
      • 3.2.1Functions of formal realisations of the questions initiating a student response
        • 3.2.1.1Wh-questions
        • 3.2.1.2Yes/no questions
        • 3.2.1.3Multiple questions
        • 3.2.1.4Directives
        • 3.2.1.5Statement + a pause
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.19058.ziv
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