Spanish Speaking Parents’ Use of Pedagogical Questions to Teach Children Language
D. Urueta Mazzillo
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Master Thesis Preventieve Jeugdhulp en Opvoeding Supervisor: Dr. Peter Hoffenaar
Reviewer: Ms. Hend Entanamly Amsterdam, June 2018
Table of Contents
Abstract ... 3
Introduction ... 4
Differential effects of question types on language development ... 5
Cultural influences ... 7 Method ... 8 Selection of transcripts ... 8 Participants ... 9 Procedure ... 10 Reliability ... 12 Plan of analysis... 12 Results ... 13 Discussion ... 14 Limitations ... 17
Future research and conclusions ... 18
References ... 20 Tables ... 26 Table 1 ... 26 Table 2 ... 26 Table 3 ... 27 Appendix A ... 28
Abstract
Questioning is a common strategy used by parents to communicate with their children. Asking and answering questions is one way that parents stimulate their children’s language development. Using the JacksonThal corpora found in the CHILDES database we coded 1350 questions asked by Spanish speaking parents during their spontaneous interactions with their 28 and 36-month old children. We examined the frequency of pedagogical questions and
determined the effect of question type on children’s responses as measured by their length of utterance. This cross-sectional study revealed that Spanish speaking parents frequently used pedagogical questions and that these elicited longer responses from children. Furthermore, Spanish speaking parents significantly used pedagogical questions more frequently than English speaking parents. Together, these findings highlight questioning as a teaching strategy
commonly used across cultures and the positive effect questions have on children’s language development. The effectiveness of pedagogical questioning has implications for parent support programs and in early childhood education. The implementation of these strategies can be elemental for the launching of programs to close the ‘word-gap’ between the poor and middle-class children that first becomes evident in the toddler years.
Spanish Speaking Parents’ Use of Pedagogical Questions to Teach Children Language The conversational exchanges that take place between a parent and child (e.g., playing, reading books, and sharing a meal) facilitate learning. Bronfenbrenner (1979) referred to these meaningful, intentional, and goal-oriented interactions as molar activities; they set the stage for parents’ language use to bring meaning to the child’s experience and to teach new concepts. According to Social Development Theory, learning occurs through social interactions (Vygotsky, 1962). During these social interactions, parents use language and ask questions in an attempt to teach their children new concepts. Given that one of a parent’s primary endeavors is to educate their children, it is important to understand the strategies they employ to stimulate children’s thinking and learning. The current study investigates parents’ questioning as a strategy to educate their children. Building on a recent study by Yu, Bonawitz and Shafto (2017), we aim to test if pedagogical questions, i.e., those questions to which parents know the answer, support children’s gross language development as measured by their length of utterance.
Questioning is one way that parents stimulate their children’s language development. From birth, children are observant beings absorbing information. Through their observations, in addition to parents’ child-directed speech, children build their receptive vocabulary. Later, once they have developed the ability for speech, they use language to express themselves (Hoff, 2014). As children’s primary form of learning is play, asking questions, naming and repetition of playful acts reinforces the language learning (Hoff, 2014; MacWhinney, 2015).
One of the most robust indices of children’s language proficiency is the length of their utterances (Rice, Smolik, Perpich, Thompson, Rytting, & Blossom, 2010). Length of utterance is a measure of children’s linguistic production that considers the number of morphemes (the smallest meaningful unit of language) in a child’s spontaneous utterances; moreover, according
to Bishop and Adams (1990) it is a good predictor of children’s future reading ability. In order to expand their length of utterance children need to build their language skills. One way for parents to stimulate their children’s language is through questioning (Rowe, Leech, & Cabrera, 2017). Differential effects of question types on language development
Questions are considered important for supporting both language and content learning. They require responses that aid children to practice and engage with language (Kuchirko, Tamis-LeMonda, Luo & Liang, 2016). At the interpersonal level, questions challenge children to
practice oral language by providing verbal explanations that promote conversational participation (Kuchirko et al., 2016; Siraj & Asani, 2015). For example, the rising intonation at the end of a question, cues children to a speaking turn (Blewitt, Rump, Shealy, & Cook, 2009; de Rivera, Girolametto, Greenberg, & Weitzman, 2005; Grosse & Tomasello, 2012; Haden, Cohen, Uttal, & Marcus, 2015). Questions also help children to develop their reasoning skills by promoting sustained shared thinking (Carr, 2011; Rowe et al., 2017). However, not all questions are created equal; different types of questions stimulate the child’s learning process to different extents (Rowe et al., 2017).
Questions can be defined based on the kind and amount of information they elicit. For example, Yu, Bonawitz and Shafto (2017) distinguished between three types of questions: pedagogical (PQ, used to ascertain that the child knows the intended concept), rhetorical (RQ, used to make a point), and information seeking questions (IS). Using the CHILDES database they analyzed 185 transcripts of English-speaking parent-child interactions to determine the frequency with which the parents use the three question types during their natural interactions with their children (MacWhinney, 2000). Their findings suggested that English-speaking parents primarily used pedagogical questions when interacting with their children.
Recently, other researchers have studied parental questioning and found that parents also use questions to teach. For example, Rowe et al., (2017) reported positive medium indirect effects of fathers’ questioning strategies in their longitudinal study of 24-month old toddlers on children’s reasoning skills at 36-months. They concluded that fathers use of questions facilitated their interaction with their children in a variety of ways, e.g., by promoting children’s thinking and reasoning skills or evaluating the child’s understanding of (new) concepts. Others have also shown that questions guide children’s learning by cuing the child to the questioners’ knowledge state or pedagogical intent, and by eliciting children’s responses (Grosse & Tomassello, 2012; Hirsch-Pasek, et al., 2015; Kuchirko et al., 2016; Rowe et al., 2017). Kuchirko et al. findings suggested that some type of parental questions elicited greater information from children than others. Though evidence supporting parental use of questioning strategies is recently more forthcoming, further research is needed to determine the differential effects of question types on e.g., language development.
By studying only English-speaking parents use of questions, Kuchirko et al., (2016), Rowe et al., (2017) and Yu et al., (2017) research ‘broke a tip off the iceberg’. Their conclusions suggest that parents do use (pedagogical) questions and that these have an effect on children’s vocabulary and reasoning skills; moreover, parental questioning decreases as children get older. Given these findings, it is important to gain further insight into parents’ questioning strategies by looking into other effects these may have on children’s development. Knowledge of parents’ teaching strategies may help in the understanding of children’s learning at home, e.g., their acquisition of thinking, language, and reasoning skills (Davis & Torr, 2016; Grosse & Tomasello, 2012).
Cultural influences
It is noteworthy that some studies have shown that teaching strategies vary across contexts and cultures (Shneidman, Gaskins, & Woodward, 2015). In general, some Western cultures appear to share patterns of teaching (Correa-Chavez & Rogoff, 2009; Kuchirko et al., 2016). However, the approach parents may take in conveying the meaning of what they teach may vary. For example, Kuchirko et al., studied mothers from three different ethnic groups, namely, African American, Dominican and Mexican and their use of questions when reading a book to their pre-school children. Findings suggested that, when the Mexican and Dominican mothers, grouped as one cultural group (i.e., as Latin Americans), differed from the African American mothers in the type of questions they asked their children. By studying non-English speaking parents questioning strategies we can more confidently generalize findings to a broader population. Therefore, it is important to understand if Yu et al., (2017) findings can also be observed in Spanish speaking parent interactions with their children while engaged in spontaneous play.
Overall, by studying parents’ questioning strategies, i.e., the types of questions they use to teach when playing with their children, we can better understand the effects these have on children’s learning and language development (Cristofaro & Tamis-LeMonda, 2012; Davis & Torr, 2016; Rowe et al., 2015; Yu et al., 2017). The purpose of this study is to examine Spanish speaking parents use of pedagogical questions. The central research question is: which types of questions do monolingual Spanish speaking parents ask to teach their children? Given Yu, Bonawitz, and Shafto’s findings, it is expected that Spanish-speaking parent’s primarily use pedagogical questions.
Furthermore, this study expands on Yu et al., (2017) findings by examining the relationship between parent’s use of questions and the child’s language use by asking: do parents’ use of pedagogical questions elicit longer responses from their children? According to Yu et al., pedagogical questions facilitate greater interaction between parent and child. It is suspected that through these interactions, parents are able to frame their use of questions to elicit greater detail in the response of their children (Cristofaro & Tamis-LeMonda, 2012; de Rivera et al., 2015). Moreover, we believe that older children’s more advanced conversational and
linguistic abilities should give them an edge over younger children in the length and detail of their responses. Given this hypothesis we ask: are the responses to pedagogical questions of the older children longer than those of the younger children?
Method
Selection of transcripts. Guided by the selection criteria used in Yu et al., (2017), we searched the CHILDES database for corpora that met the following criteria:
1) The transcript must be of a monolingual Spanish speaking parent-child spontaneous interaction; only parental questions and children’s responses to the questions were considered for the analysis. Whenever others (e.g., investigators or siblings) were present, their interaction with the target child was only used to understand the context of the conversation.
2) The participating child must have been between 28-36 months. According to Hoff (2014), at this age, children are able to express themselves at least at the single word level making it possible to calculate the length of utterance. Furthermore, this age range isolates the mean length of utterance measure from influencing factors such as children’s ability to read.
3) To ensure that all transcripts include an approximately equal amount of interaction between the parent and the child, only those transcripts that had at least 10 consecutive conversational turns and evidenced a flow of conversation were selected.
4) Additionally, we selected files that used punctuation marks and question-type words to distinguish parents’ questions from statements.
Participants
Following these criteria, we identified the JacksonThal corpus which contained 202 transcripts of which 50 met the specified criteria (MacWhinney, 2000). The original JacksonThal project was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundation and the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) in México (Thal & Jackson-Maldonado, 1993). This corpus consists of cross-sectional data of spontaneous interactions between Spanish
speaking mothers and their children. It includes five age groups of which only the 28 and 36 months groups were used. According to the description, the 30-minute recordings took place in three consecutive intervals, of which two were structured play (using the same stimuli, namely, colored blocks, kitchen play-food, dishes, cups, spoons, pitcher, cars, a doll and crib, puppets and a Fisher Price farm) and a book reading activity. These were labeled ‘Situation 1’ (structured play with the parent), ‘Situation 2’ (book reading with either parent or investigator), and ‘Situation 3’ (structured play with the investigator). Given that ‘Situation 1’ consisted of the target parent child interaction, these were selected for the analysis; in instances where there were not enough conversational turns found in this situation, the parent-child exchanges in the other two situations supplemented the data.
The setting of the recordings varied between university laboratories and homes in four different cities, namely, México City, Querétaro, and the small rural community of Santa Barbara; all three communities are located in México.
The corpus classified all participants as being from a mid to lower socio-economic status (SES). This classification was based on the reported education level of the participating parents. The mothers in the Santa Barbara, México community were particularly described as being from a small rural lower socio-economic status with less than high school education. The mothers from Querétaro (41.1%) and México City (22%), two prosperous cities in México, were
described some as having partial high school education and the others with higher education. All families were of Mexican origin living in Mexico at the time of the recordings. The transcript descriptions did not specify further detailed information regarding the parents’ age and education level or the families’ SES.
Procedure
Yu et al., (2017) detailed coding scheme for parents’ questions allows coders to reliably make a distinction between the different question types (see Appendix A). First, the questions were categorized as pedagogical (PQ), information seeking (IS), and rhetorical (RQ) based on the knowledge state and intention of the mother. Once the question type was established, these were further subcategorized. According to Gelman, Goetz, Sarnecka, and Flukes (2008) pedagogical questions can teach either generic or specific information. On the other hand, information-seeking and rhetorical questions are distinguishable by their function (Olsen-Fulero, & Conforti, 1983). In cases where the mother’s knowledge state and intention were difficult to judge by the question itself, the context of the questions was used in addition to the linked video clips, when available.
To answer the first research question, “to what extent do Spanish speaking parents use questions to teach their children?”, transcripts containing the conversational exchanges between parent and child were transferred to a Unicode Text Excel file. A conversational exchange consisted of a parent’s question, followed by a child’s response and a parent’s follow-up
statement (Kurkul & Corriveau, 2017). Inasmuch the same way as this discourse pattern is used to acquire knowledge, it is expected that its use will assist the child in expanding on their utterances in response to parents’ questions (Chouinard, Harris, & Maratsos, 2007; Frazier, Gelman, & Wellman, 2009).
Using the Excel file, the transcripts were coded for question type by the primary
researcher; subsequently, the children’s length of utterance was measured. When it was not clear how to code the question type, the context of the conversation was used. In the event that a question could not be matched to a child’s response, i.e., the parent asked two consecutive questions in one conversational turn, both questions were coded.
After coding each question, the length of utterance of the child’s response was counted. Calculation of the length of utterance provided the needed evidence to answer the question, do parents’ use of pedagogical questions elicit longer responses from their children? Length of the utterance is calculated by counting the number of morphemes per utterance (Brown, 1973; Hoff, 2014; Jackson-Maldonado & Conboy, 2007). Given that Spanish is an inflected language, viz., one in which the words are comprised of roots, stems, inflections or endings, where the root remains stable and the inflected portion changes depending on the function of the word, it was necessary to calculate the length of utterance manually. Once having calculated the length of each utterance, a mean length of utterance per question type was calculated.
Reliability. Given that Yu et al., (2017) used a reliable coding scheme, where they achieved an interrater reliability, Cohen’s κ = .830, this study’ author was the only coder. The coder is a native speaker of Spanish, with experience with the different dialects of the Spanish language. Using Urbaniak and Plous’, (2017) Research Randomizer webtool, the coder randomly selected 50 questions to ascertain that the questions were reliably coded. Upon blindly re-coding this subset of questions, 98% reliability was achieved. For the one question where the reliability code did not agree with the original code, it was noted that the reliability code was within the same category of the original code; in this case the question was pedagogical general in nature and had been originally coded as pedagogical specific. Upon reviewing Yu, Bonawitz and Shafto’s coding scheme, the code was reverted to pedagogical general. By the same token, out of the 1004 child utterances 50 were also randomly selected for reliability. In this case, 100% reliability was achieved.
Plan of analysis
The analyses were carried out using IBM SPSS 24 version 24.0, Armonk, NY., United States. Initially, descriptive statistics were used to determine the average frequency of the three different question types and their subcategories. Next, a mixed linear model was used to
determine the effect that a particular type of question had on eliciting language from children. This type of modeling considers the explained variability in the data thereby allowing for an imbalance in the units and accommodation of missing data. Furthermore, this type of modeling allows to adjust for the correlation between the parent’s use of the different types of questions and the child’s response length. In this case, parent questions were used as the predictor variable and length of child’s utterance as dependent variable. Measures were taken at two intervals, namely, at 28-months and those at 36-months, to make a cross-sectional comparison of the
children’s productions. These measures were used to assess the effect of the parent’s use of pedagogical questions on the child’s length of utterance at the child’s particular age.
Results
To answer the main research question ‘which types of questions monolingual Spanish speaking parents ask to teach their children?’, the frequency (in percentages) of each category and subcategory of question type used by the sampled parents was calculated. Results suggest that out of a total 1350 questions these were primarily pedagogical (48.1%) and information seeking questions (44.7%), and to a lesser extent, rhetorical questions (7.2%). When considering each question type subcategory, results revealed that most questions were pedagogical specific (44.5%) and that parents asked information seeking questions with the intent to check status (17.6%), e.g., ask the child’s opinion or epistemic state (see Table 1). A Z-test was used to compare the proportions of PQ’s asked by Spanish speaking parents to those asked by English speaking parents (as presented by Yu et al., 2017). Results suggested that Spanish-speaking parents proportionally asked more PQ’s than their English-speaking counterparts (z = 11.82; p < .001).
Next, we constructed a mixed linear model where we tested the effect of question types on the length of utterance of children. This type of model estimates the effect that a particular question type had on eliciting language, by adjusting for the relationship between the parent’s use of the different types of questions and the child’s response (length of utterance - LoU; Field, 2018). Results indicated that a significant effect of questions on the length of utterance of the children, F (2, 1339) = 3.28, p = .038 (see Table 2). Post-hoc comparisons to determine
specifically which question type created the effect on LoU, revealed that pedagogical questions had the greatest effect (than any other question type analyzed), t (1334) = 2.10, p = .036).
Meaning that the children in this sample (N= 53) tended to use the longest utterances when responding to pedagogical questions, an average of 1.37 (SD = 1.58) words per utterance (see Table 3).
Finally, we expanded the model to look at the effect of question type along with child’s age and sex on the children’s length of utterance. Using the children’s age, we tested for the interaction effects of parent’s questions on children’s length of utterance response. The results suggested that adding age and sex as variables to the model did not influence the significance of the effect of question type on LoU. However, it is noteworthy that the effect of question type on LoU was diminished yet remained significant, F (2, 1337) = 3.167, p = .042. We concluded that the effect of asking pedagogical questions did not differ as a function of age or sex.
Discussion
Questions, when used with the intent of extracting knowledge, teach children and influence their language skills. The current study explored the use of pedagogical questions by Spanish speaking parents. Overall, results indicate that Spanish speaking parents use pedagogical questions frequently and that these have a significant effect on their children’s language skills, i.e., their length of utterances, independent of the child’s age or sex.
First, we tested the frequency of Spanish speaking parents use of pedagogical questions while at play with their children. Their frequent use of PQ’s finding is in agreement with previous data on parental questioning strategies (Yu et al., 2017; Kurchirko et al., 2016).
Kurchirko et al. explain that different types of questions elicit specific type of knowledge. In our study, it was apparent that the parents used (specific) pedagogical questions to primarily teach and test knowledge of the objects the children used.
When comparing the different studies on parent questioning strategies it is noted that though they share a common purpose, i.e., to identify questions as method for extracting
knowledge, they differ in the way they operationalize questions. For example, some studies have documented that certain question types, when operationalized as open-ended questions,
positively influence shared thinking and thus stimulate the expansion of utterances (de Rivera et al., 2005; Siraj-Blatchford & Manni, 2008). Because specific pedagogical questions teach about kinds of objects or people, general concepts, rules, or scripts, they classify mostly as close-ended. When operationalizing specific PQ’s as closed-ended, we found that their use elicited longer LoU’s; that is to say that, independent of children’s age and sex, using pedagogical questions facilitates the possibility for children to express themselves in longer utterances. These findings lend support to previous research, (Rowe et al., 2017), suggesting that questions
facilitate children’s verbal explanations.
Compared to the proportion of pedagogical questions reported in Yu et al., (2017), this particular group of Spanish speaking parents proportionally asked more PQ’s than their English-speaking counterparts. A possible explanation may be that the instructions the parents were given in the original JackonsonThal study prompted them to ask more questions i.e., possibly to keep the interaction going. Another explanation may be that the parents presented as more loquacious and eager to challenge their children to practice oral language. Despite these possible limitations, the fact remains that Spanish speaking parents consistently used pedagogical questions in their interactions with their children.
Further, these findings also highlight the similarities of parental teaching strategies across cultures. Correa-Chavez and Rogoff (2009), among others, have argued that parental teaching strategies can vary across cultures (Shneidman, Gaskins, & Woodward, 2015). However, the
current findings highlight that, across cultures, parents also use questioning as a teaching strategy and that these not only teach children but similarly influence their language development.
On the other hand, the interaction of question types and child age effects on length of utterance were not significant. Three explanations can be proposed to explain these findings. On the one hand, Brown (1973) reports that two-years old children speak an approximate 2.0-2.5 words per utterance (wpu) as opposed to three-year old who speak at an 3.0-3.75 wpu. It is possible that half a word to one-and-a-quarter word difference in length of utterance is not enough to produce significant differences in a child’s response. Possibly, these norms are
dependent on how the speech is elicited from the child. In other words, it is not clear whether the same length of utterance can be expected when speaking spontaneously or when merely
answering a question. Because pedagogical questions are specific to a topic this may limit the amount of words one can use to talk about an object. Further analysis may be needed to confirm this line of thinking.
Moreover, it may be that given the amount of questions parents asked, children did not have enough opportunities to answer all of them. The transcript from participant 36sb05 illustrates this point. In this transcript it was evident that the mother bombarded the child with questions and appeared to not allow time for his response; in fact, this transcript has over 20 questions asked by the parent but no responses from the child to account for his length of utterance.
Yet another possible explanation may also be that the recording environment may not have been comfortable to the participants. Similar to Grosse and Tomasello’s (2012) findings, the children may not have been familiar or felt they were in a test environment (when in the university lab, or when at home, when a stranger – the investigator – was) and thus their play
interaction with the parent was more guarded thereby making them more uncomfortable. According to Grosse and Tomasello and Ceci and Bronfenbrenner (1985) children easily can identify when they are being tested and thus their strategical approach to performing test acts in an unfamiliar environment may vary accordingly.
Limitations
The dilemma of using archival data vs. collecting data is often an issue when conducting research. To conduct a conceptual replication of Yu et al., (2017) the current study also used archival data from the CHILDES databank. Using archival data can be advantageous, e.g., ease of data collection, numerous amount of data, to name some; however, it also comes with its limitations (Cheung et al., 2017). For the current study, these limitations can be summarized by the lack of control over data collection.
The first challenge to the current study was finding data that matched the study’s criteria. This is an essential limitation as the foundation of a study lies in the data collected. When conducting studies involving children’s development it is important to obtain data in the most natural of settings. The description of the data collection methods that accompanied the corpus used was vague. The database did not specify where each recording took place; whether in the home or the university setting, or the type of distractions that were present. As previously stated, being outside of familiar surroundings may affect the performance of the participants.
Another challenge was that the answers given by the child were not checked for appropriateness. At times children’s responses did not seem fitting to the questions. As little information was available regarding the context of conversation, it was not sure if the child did not know the right answer or was simply changing the topic. This is important because topic appropriate answers are an important sign of language development (Hoff, 2014).
Future research and Conclusion
As questions have been identified as an important strategy to promote children’s learning in both educational as well as home setting, it may be interesting to see the effect of questions, and more specifically question types, on other aspects of language development, e.g., vocabulary use (Yu et al., 2017). Using the same dataset, it may also be interesting to look not only at the single conversational turn, but rather at an entire conversational sample. In practice, this analysis may be useful to determine the child’s ability to answer questions accurately in specific
conversational situations, thereby providing a more accurate measure of their LoU and overall language development. Last, when looking at who is asking the questions, comparisons between fathers and mothers, as well as parents and educators may also highlight more specific
differences in each one’s teaching style and how these enhance children’s learning abilities. In conclusion, it is worthwhile to continue to study the relationship of the use of
questions by parents on children’s language development. A more comprehensive understanding of parents’ questioning strategies across cultures can be useful for the improvement of parenting programs. For the young parent, they can learn early on the types of questions that are
appropriate for developing a good relationship with their child and teach new concepts. For parents of at-risk or developmentally delayed children (e.g., autistic or language delayed) they can learn how to better communicate and develop strategies to teach new concepts and/or communication skills and stimulate their children’s overall language development. In the long run, promoting these parenting strategies, e.g., asking different types of questions to encourage increased use of vocabulary and longer utterances, can impact on the current drive toward the need to rebuild the foundation and narrow the gap for those underprivileged children who are at
risk because of their social-economic background (Romeo et al., 2018). Early parental involvement can serve as the basis for children’s future educational success.
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Table 1
Frequency of Used Questions
Category Type Frequency (%)
Pedagogical (PQ) 48.1
PQ Specific 44.5
PQ Generic 3.6
Information Seeking (IS) 44.7
IS Check Status 17.6 IS Specific 14.3 IS Clarification 10.1 IS Permission 2.7 Rhetorical (RQ) 7.2 RQ Attention 4.7 RQ Commands 2.4 Table 2
Fixed Effects for Models Predicting Effect of Question Type on Length of Utterance
Variables Model 1 Model 2
F Df p F Df p 3 Question types 3.281 2, 1339 .038* 3.170 2,1337 .042* Sex 0.087 1, 48 .769 0.469 1, 72.38 .495 Age 0.127 1, 48 .723 0.965 1, 70.34 .329 Q-types x sex 0.723 2, 1336 .486 Q-type x age 1.287 2, 1334 .277
Note. Question types: PQ = Pedagogical.
Table 3
Mean Length of Utterance per Question Type
Category n M (SD)
Pedagogical 651 1.4 (1.6)
Information Seeking 602 1.3 (1.7)
Rhetorical 97 1.2 (1.5)
Total 1350 1.3 (1.6)
Note. M = mean; SD = Standard Deviation.
Appendix A Questions Coding Scheme
Category Description Example Translation
Pedagogical
(PQ) Questioner knows answer, wants questioned to learn PQ Generic Teaches about kinds of objects or people, general concepts,
rules, or scripts
¿qué más va
acá adentro? What else goes in here? PQ Specific Teaches about specific object, event, or person ¿dónde vive el pollito? Where does the chick live? Information
Seeking (IS)
Questioner seeks answer from questioned
IS Specific Asking about a specific object, event, or person ¿para qué es? What’s it used for?
IS Check status
Asks about the child’s needs, opinions, or
physical/emotional/epistemic status
¿te gusta? Do you like it?
IS
Clarification Asks the child to repeat what he just said ¿qué es una que? What (did you say) it is? IS Permission Asks for permission una torre? ¿hacemos Shall we make a tower? Rhetorical
(RQ) Question not intended to be answered verbally RQ
Commands Gives a command in a question form ¿a ver, cuál? Show me, which one?
RQ Attention Raises child’s attention with a question
¿A ver, cuál les vas a
contar Arielita?
Let’s see, which one are you going to tell them about,
