Questions in Language Learning

After a particularly frustrating day of Arabic 102, I began to ponder the nature of questions in a language learning classroom. It came to me that there are a few reasons students may not want to answer a question that the teacher has posed to them.

1. Students didn't understand the material prior to the question, so they cannot formulate a reply containing the correct information.
2. Students didn't understand the content of the question.
3. Students understood the material and the question, but they do not feel they can grammatically formulate a reply.
4. Students understood the material and the question and can formulate a reply, but do not feel the question is worth answering.

Of course, teachers should be able to minimize the occurrence of these problems by choosing their material and questions carefully, but in the event that students are not answering a question, I wonder if it would be helpful for teachers to know why it is that students are staring at them in silence. Maybe in my future language classroom I will experiment with posting these reasons someplace and allowing students to share with me which reason they have for not answering. While this could be used as an excuse, a get-out-of-jail-free card, it may also force students to think about what they're not understanding. If that happens, it might increase students' metalinguistic skills and boost their ability to learn language independently.