Prof. HU Guangwei, Department of English and Communication

A quest for productive teacher questioning in Hong Kong EMI classrooms. The International Symposium on Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Teacher Education. Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hong Kong, 20-21 January 2026.

Abstract
Teacher questions are vital to maintaining and sustaining student engagement. In Hong Kong secondary classrooms where English is used as the medium of instruction (EMI), productive teacher questioning has a fundamental role to play in promoting both language and content learning. Drawing on data from a UGC-funded project, this presentation analyzes the questioning practices and beliefs of teachers from EMI schools in Hong Kong. It will demonstrate that the teachers adopted different approaches to questioning. Their questioning practices can be captured by a dynamic model of two intersecting dimensions: cognitive demand (lower- and higher-order questions) and interactional orientation (authoritative and dialogic discourse). These findings support the notion of teacher questioning as pedagogy and demonstrate how skillfully crafted teacher questioning can enhance student engagement. A guiding framework is proposed for productive teacher questioning that relies on the synergistic combination of cognitive demand and interactional orientation.