Issue

Vol. 11 No. 2 (2022)

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Submitted
Apr 19, 2023
Published
Apr 19, 2023

Classroom Discourse in Populated Classes in Tanzania: Questions as Pedagogical Lecturing Strategy at the University of Dar es Salaam

Erick Nikuigize Shartiely

Journal of Education, Humanities & Science (JEHS), Vol. 11 No. 2 (2022)

Abstract

This paper reports the findings of a study on the utilisation of questions by lecturers in
facilitating teaching and learning during lectures at the University of Dar es Salaam. Three
objectives guided the study: (i) identifying the types of questions that lecturers use to
facilitate teaching and learning; (ii) establishing the pattern of lecturers’ use of questions;
and (iii) determining why lecturers use questions as a discourse strategy to convey
information at a sophisticated level of academic rhetoric to facilitate knowledge delivery.
Data used to demonstrate this linguistic practice were collected from eight (8) recorded
lectures, and interviews with lecturers teaching first-year students in two departments of
the University of Dar es Salaam: Political Science and Public Administration, and Sociology
and Social Anthropology. Using the discourse analysis (DA) approach, the study identified
and analysed the nature of questions as a discourse strategy for lecturers struggling to cope
with rising numbers of undergraduate students, and as part of spoken registers generically
applied in university teaching in Tanzania. The study found that lecturers used four types
of questions: tag, rhetorical, closed-ended and open-ended questions. It further established
that lecturers used the four types of questions as pedagogical strategy to stimulate
students, involve them, and to manage a class. These four types of questions played a
facilitative role in enabling knowledge transfer during lectures with large numbers of
undergraduates being baptised to university teaching methods at the ‘deep-end’. Overall,
this question pedagogical strategy proved to be useful at the University of Dar es Salaam
that continues to witness a steady growth in the numbers of matriculating undergraduate
students. This paper, therefore, broadens the understanding on how university lecturers
utilise various discourse strategies to enhance knowledge delivery and understanding.

Keywords

classroom discourse discourse analysis pedagogical strategy tag questions discourse strategy rhetorical questions,
Nikuigize Shartiely, E. . (2023). Classroom Discourse in Populated Classes in Tanzania: Questions as Pedagogical Lecturing Strategy at the University of Dar es Salaam. Journal of Education, Humanities & Science (JEHS), 11(2). Retrieved from http://ojs3.bongotech.info/index.php/jehs/article/view/197
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