Questions are essential in learning as they are one of the best ways to gain deeper insights. It is a well-known fact that we learn by asking questions and precisely for this reason we, as future teachers, must bear in mind some things when making questions.
First of all, it is
important to know that there are two different types of questions. On
the one hand, referential questions are the ones to which the
teachers do not know the answer when they ask them, as for example:
Do you like pasta? What do you like doing in your free time? On the
other hand, display questions are the ones to which the teachers know
the answer as for example: What do we add to the third person
singular in the present simple? The important thing about this is
that it has been proved that we tend to make display questions and
therefore referential questions should be increased. Those kind of
questions really make the student reflect, when talking about display
questions students do not have to think so much, they know the answer
or they don't.
It is important to say
that when talking about questions there is another distintion, open
questions are those that have an unlimited number of answers while
closed questions have a limited number of possible answer. Therefore,
when making questions we should also bear in mind that there must be
a balance between open and closed questions because we tend to ask
closed questions. According to my view and as many experts say, open
are better than closed questions because they allow students to
reason and think and at the same time they allow the teacher to
extend the interaction with the student making more questions related
to the toping.
Another imporant thing
which we should know is that even though yes/no questions are fine,
they produced limited responses whereas wh- questions always produce
longer responses. For this reason a good idea would be to start
interaction with the student with a yes/no question and then move to
wh- questions. Apart from that, questions must be directed. Sometimes
we ask questions to the whole class and that can be detrimental to
some students because just students who actively participate in class
and are confident will answer and those who are shy to speak in
public or not confident enough will remain silent. We must try that
all of our student participate in class.
Finally, I would mention
some other factors that are important when making questions.
Responding to learner's response is essential but we musn't do that
immediately, before answering we must ask other learners for
agreement or disagreement in order to engage more students in the
conversation and make them reflect. Wait-time is also essential as
learners should be given time to reply, if they feel pressed it is
probable that they will not answer the question. If we think that our
students have not understood the questions we should rephrase them in
order to facilitate comprehension, rephrasing for simplicity is very
important. Rephrasing but in this case a learner's erros is very
important too, that is a good way of making him aware of his mistake
in an indirect way without putting him down.
To conclude, I would like
to say that, as we have seen, questions are a vital element in
teaching. That is why teachers should be careful when making them. If
we want to ensure learning it is important that we take all this
factors into account.
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