Display Questions

Questions where the teacher already knows the answer. The purpose is not to seek information but to get the learner to display their knowledge of the language — hence the name. Long and Sato (1983) introduced the term in their study of ESL classroom discourse, contrasting display questions with referential questions (where the teacher genuinely does not know the answer).

Examples:

• "What colour is this pen?" (holding up a blue pen)
• "What's the past tense of 'go'?"
• "Is this sentence correct: 'She goed to school'?"
• "What does 'reluctant' mean?"

In each case, the teacher knows the answer. The question tests whether the student does.

Why Teachers Ask Them

Display questions dominate language classrooms. Long and Sato (1983) found that ESL teachers asked far more display questions than referential ones — a pattern repeatedly confirmed in subsequent research. The reasons are practical:

1. Checking comprehension — after presenting new language, the teacher needs to verify that students understood. Display questions are efficient for this.
2. Controlled practice — in accuracy-focused stages, display questions give students a chance to produce target language with immediate feedback.
3. Managing participation — display questions with known answers allow the teacher to control the pace, nominate students, and distribute turns evenly.
4. Safety — both teacher and student know what a correct answer looks like, which reduces anxiety and unpredictability.

The Problem

The critique of display questions, articulated most forcefully in the communicative teaching tradition, is that they create inauthentic discourse. In real conversation, people do not ask questions they already know the answers to (except in quizzes and courtrooms). Classroom interaction dominated by display questions looks like this:

T: What did she do yesterday? S: She went to the park. T: Good. And what did she see? S: She saw a dog.

This is the IRF/IRE pattern (Initiation–Response–Feedback/Evaluation), described by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) and Mehan (1979). It produces short, constrained responses, minimal student thinking, and no genuine communication.

Brock (1986) demonstrated experimentally that when teachers were trained to ask more referential questions, student responses became significantly longer, syntactically more complex, and contained more connectives. The display question condition produced shorter, simpler output.

Thornbury (2006) noted that eliciting sequences are "often wrongly categorised as display questions" — he distinguishes between checking what students know (display) and getting students to guess what they do not know (eliciting), which he considers a different and sometimes problematic practice.

In Defence of Display Questions

Despite the critique, display questions are not inherently bad. They serve genuine pedagogical functions:

• At lower levels, students need scaffolded opportunities to produce language. A referential question requiring spontaneous, unpredictable output may be beyond a beginner's capacity.
• During controlled practice, the point is accuracy, not communication. Display questions with clear right answers help students proceduralise new forms.
• For concept checking, display questions are essential. "Is this present or past?" is a display question, and it is exactly the right question to ask after presenting a new tense.
• Warm-up and review — "What did we learn last lesson?" is technically a display question, but it activates prior knowledge and provides a bridge into new material.

The issue is not display questions themselves, but their dominance. A lesson consisting entirely of display questions is a missed opportunity for genuine communication.

The Balance

Good questioning practice involves a mix:

Stage	Question type	Rationale
Presentation	Display	Check understanding of new language
Controlled practice	Display	Practise target forms with known answers
Freer practice	Referential	Generate genuine communication
Discussion	Referential + open	Develop fluency and critical thinking
Review	Display	Consolidate and check retention

Key References

• Long, M. H., & Sato, C. J. (1983). Classroom foreigner talk discourse: Forms and functions of teachers' questions. In H. W. Seliger & M. H. Long (Eds.), Classroom oriented research in second language acquisition (pp. 268–285). Newbury House.
• Brock, C. A. (1986). The effects of referential questions on ESL classroom discourse. TESOL Quarterly, 20(1), 47–59.
• Sinclair, J. McH., & Coulthard, R. M. (1975). Towards an analysis of discourse. Oxford University Press.
• Mehan, H. (1979). Learning lessons: Social organization in the classroom. Harvard University Press.
• Thornbury, S. (2006). An A–Z of ELT. Macmillan.