teachers’ confirmation questions: help or hindrance for the efl learners

Teachers play a central role in language classrooms and their feedback/follow-up move in response to learners’ contribution is of crucial importance in their learning. specific competencies are required by the teachers to effectively manage their talk as a tool for facilitating learners’ involvement. this teachers’ ability to make the appropriate decision at the moment is conceptualized as classroom interactional competence (cic). confirmation questions (cqs) can be used to help learners link information with prior knowledge and mediate learning. thus, this study was conducted with an eye on delving into upper-intermediate efl learners’ classroom interaction to investigate how teacher talk (using the confirmation questions in this case) can facilitate or hinder learning opportunities. that is, after talking to the institutes authority and teachers, asking for their permission three regular classroom sessions of 10 iranian efl teachers teaching in three language institutes were both audio and video-recorded. the recorded data was transcribed and the number of cqs were counted (580) in all teaching contexts (meaning-and-fluency, form-and-accuracy, procedural, task-oriented). since the aim was to identify when and to what extent the teachers may seize or miss learning opportunity, position in turn, polarity, speech function and intonation were analyzed. the conversation analysis (ca) was deployed to analyze the naturally talk in interaction. findings displayed a higher frequency of teachers' use of cqs in the form-and-accuracy and task-oriented contexts leading to students’ involvement in the teachers’ on-going explanations. cqs also resulted in advanced learners’ engagement in problem-solving which can be regarded as creating learning opportunities. results are discussed and some pedagogical implications are presented.