Questioning technique
The first point to establish is that students should be allowed to refer to the text when answering any questions. The purpose of asking questions is not to test memory but to support understanding, to prompt and draw students' attention to aspects of the text.
ACTIVITY 15
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What do you think is wrong with the following question? Did the man know the woman? |
This is a common mistake when setting questions on a text. It is an example of a 'closed question', to which the answer can only really be 'Yes' or 'No'. Although such a question may test very basic comprehension and can thus have its uses, if the teacher wants students to use the language of the text in their reply, it is a pretty useless question.
One simple way round this is to make an obviously wrong statement and to invite correction through a question tag - for example:
It was in the autumn, wasn't it?
This invites the response 'No' but also the correction:
It was in the summer.
Or, again:
The man had never seen the woman before, had he?
This prompts the reply and correction:
Yes, he had. He had met her at the party at the weekend.
Another approach is to ask more 'open' questions which cannot simply be answered 'Yes' or 'No'. For example:
What
are we told about the weather?
What
measures did the government introduce to tackle unemployment?
How
do we know the housing policy is not working?
As well as prompting greater use of language by the student, this technique sounds a lot more natural than typical comprehension questions.
When asking questions on a text, you need to be clear about the purpose. Is it:
- to check that students are following the text and have not got lost?
- to get students to show that they understand the text?
- to get students to practise language by manipulating a structure in the text?
ACTIVITY 16
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Consider the following passage: At long last, after much delay, VW has rejected the more radical recommendation of the Munich-based management consultants, and has implemented its own Supervisory Board's original rescue package. This has led to the loss of a 'mere' 15,000 jobs but it has at least secured production at all four existing German plants and the three other main European ones. The two plants in Scandinavia are not affected by the changes. |
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Here are some questions one might ask on this text. What differences do you notice between them?(Click on 'Commentary' for some notes on this activity.)
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It is all too easy to ask questions of just one type when doing oral work in class. But it is important that students are exposed to a variety of question types so that they are encouraged to read in different ways and to read critically and with interpretation - both crucial skills in the development of reading in a foreign language. A natural sequence might be to start with literal questions and to move onto interpretative and analytical ones, before introducing inferencing, evaluative and personal questions once the basics of the text are fully understood. Questions to practise language can either come after types 1, 3, 4, or at the end.
Finally, it should not always be you who asks the questions. Teachers' traditional reluctance to get students to ask questions, means many learners are not very good at formulating them. Just as the best way to get to know any material is to try to teach it to someone else, having to devise questions on a text is certain to make students read it thoroughly and more critically. Questions can either be asked of other learners, individually or in groups, or the tables can be turned on the teacher and you can try to answer them (perhaps without referring to the text to make it more interesting/ challenging!).
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