Even those lectures with less actual dialogue in them can and do have interactional features.
The content-oriented questions serve similar purpose as rhetorical questions. In this study the functions of these questions are classified as focusing and organizing. This division was adapted from Crawford Camiciottoli’s (2008) study which was based on Bamford’s (2005) study on lecture questions and answers. Crawford Camiciottoli used a division focusing and stimulating thought, but when the present data was searched for these categories, it became evident that the stimulating thought type questions were not present in it. However, there were two different types of content-oriented questions. The first one could be defined as focusing while the other one could be seen as organizing.
A highly noteworthy issue regarding these content-oriented questions is the fact that they are more present in the challenging lectures (N=38) than in the accessible ones (N=27) (see Tables 4.3 and 4.4). The organizing category is completely missing from the accessible lectures while there are twelve instances of them in the challenging lectures.
The following passages provide an overview and analysis of these question categories.
Focusing
The focusing content-oriented questions, as defined above, contain those questions which focus the audience’s attention to the issue at hand.
Table 6.4 above depicts the total number of focusing questions (N=53). The majority of these are wh-questions. Examples (52) – (53) show specimens of focusing questions.
(52) L: /…/. so how the properties in the filter cake when it’s forming, during this coating affects to dewater so what kind of pressure drop for instance we create for this way so two things this positive liquid phase and the pressure drop in the filter cake and this last thing here actually says what we need in, in practice /…/
CL05
The lecturer’s continuous speech may, at times, become monotonous to the audience, but with the questions inserted at appropriate intervals the lecturer may be attempting to focus students’ attention to the key issues on the lecture. In this excerpt the important issues are also counted two things and then the theory is linked to practice, which should allow at least those students who have worked at a paper mill to relate the theory to the practical problems in the mill.
The following passage (53) shows how questions are used as a focusing tool and the one we are most interested in at this time is the parallel question.
(53) L: /…/ and now you can see once again this figure and what it told you when we talk about effluent qualities of water effluent quality and which which factor affects which quality of course when we talk about generally there is first there is a process type what is the temperature of the process is it low or high temperature raw materials are what is this raw material you put in process you can guess what is the effluent quality when you when you have for example pulping process you can find all those compounds which you can find from wood and as you know /…/
AL21
This lecturer also uses questions to list the important issues regarding the factors influencing water effluent quality. First a wh-question what is the temperature of the process and immediately a parallel question is it low or high temperature and yet another
wh-question what is this raw material you put in process. The lecturer may have realized that the audience may think the temperature has to be known exactly when what he meant is the importance of knowing whether temperature is high or low, not the temperature in exact degrees. This, again, relates the theory to practice and gives the students tools on how to estimate different things when working within the process industry.
The last example of the content-oriented focusing questions is a yes/no question (54) below.
(54) L1: /…/ now i would like to add one which is not known that much normally and which is that wood is the only construction erm only relevant construction material which is renewable there’s no other er construction material which is renewable which means that it grows or have you seen steel trees or concrete you just can’t and this is one of the general characteristics which is not known that much so what happens is that by by environmental or renewable aspect wood is by four erm by far quite good /…/
AL17
Here the lecturer uses a delightfully ridiculous image in order to enable his audience to remember one of the great aspects of wood as a material. it is easy to think of the audience imagining a steel or a concrete tree and through that image the key point of this passage is easily recalled when necessary.
Organizing
These questions form a small category (N=22) and they all are present in the challenging lectures. Since there are only wh-questions, two examples of similar kind are listed below as Examples (55) and (56). These excerpts are from the same lecture, as this was the only lecturer who used these questions. As mentioned above, the lecturers’ personal style may influence the type of questions they use when lecturing.
(55) L1: /…/ and normally we would like to increase viscosity level and causing also change in the pressure pressure loss, and how we can do it with these polymers, this is more or less nice to know information i don’t actually need to give this more, we need to look first at the consequences and then i will come back to describe things more in detail /…/
CL05
The lecturer poses a question on polymers and as soon as he does this, points out that it is not one of the essentials and moves to another topic. In this case the question can be seen as the boundary from which the focus is on another issue. Perhaps this question is used as a teaser for the students to find out more about the polymers and their effect on the viscosity level even if it is only nice to know information. It may also be possible that as the lecturer mentions polymers he realizes the polymer route would take him too far from where he is supposed to go and thus he makes another turn and starts to look at the consequences first.
The following excerpt shows metalanguage used prior to the questions.
(56) now we will move on to the next point which is the immobilized, immobilized layer so this filter cake part, and how to effect and what the factors are actually causing these effects to the liquid penetration and the pressure drop, from our materials we know that we have different types of pigments we have isometric, so these blocking ones, like calcium carbonate or we have rod-like and plate-like kaolin plates as an example, so they they are different from their nature
CL05
First the lecturer points out that they are about to move to the following point and then lists the issues that will be discussed. After the listed questions, the topic is pigments which may at first seem far from the liquid penetration and the pressure drop and with this contrast the lecturer may have thought to stimulate students’ thought into wondering how pigments are related to liquid penetration and the pressure drop. Naturally, as the lecture proceeds, this issue becomes quite clear, but these questions and the topic change after them can be seen as an audience activating feature in this lecture. Despite these efforts on the lecturer’s part, this lecture was one of the challenging ones.
6.4 Summary
The mere glance at the question quantities in the present data indicates the importance of interactional features, such as questions, in lectures. The accessible lectures contained 196 questions in total while the challenging lectures had 78 of them.
When the questions were analyzed in more detail, the division between content-oriented (i.e.
rhetorical) and audience-oriented questions provided further information. The accessible lectures contained more instances of audience-oriented questions (N=169) while only 27 of the content-oriented questions. Students initiated 15 of the audience-oriented questions in accessible lectures. The situation was the complete opposite for the challenging lectures, which contained only 40 audience-oriented questions and 38 content-oriented questions.
When the student initiated questions (N=19) are deducted from the audience-oriented questions in challenging lectures, we see that lecturers asked 21 audience-oriented questions in those lectures. These results indicate that the use of audience-oriented questions in particular improves lecture comprehensibility.