Aspects to consider when we are asking questions

We as (future) teachers must take into account some “tips” that might be useful when we are asking questions to our students if we want to do it in an effective way. In this post I will summarize and explain a bit the most important ones, but before doing that, it is essential to differentiate two ways to classify questions.

There are referential and display questions. The first kind of questions are those to which the teacher doesn’t know the answer. For example “What are you doing this weekend?” or “Do you like going shopping?”. On the other hand, the teacher knows the answer if he or she is asking a display question, and what is more, the students also know that the teacher already knows the answer to the question. A good example could be when a teacher takes an apple and asks the class “What is it?” Once we know the difference between these type of questions, it is essential that we as future teachers tend to increase the number of referential ones since they are more useful.

We can also classify questions in open and close, being the open ones those which have an unlimited number of answers and the closed ones those which have a limited number of answers. It’s important that teachers ask not only closed questions but also open ones. So instead of just asking “Where do you live?” we could ask “What things do you like from the place where you live?”.

So we can understand that there are some RIGHT KIND OF QUESTIONS. These include questions that allow the teacher to extend the interaction by further questioning, for example extending YES/NO answers by asking WH- questions. That would be: “Do you like playing tennis? –Yes –Why do you like it?”. It is not wrong to ask yes/no questions but it is advisable to combine both.

Another aspect to bear in mind is to avoid “thin air” questions, that is, questions that the teacher asks to the whole class but no one is specially nominated to reply it. Questions must be directed and asked, in a first instance to the whole class but then to a designated student.

This is a summary of the most important guidelines for teachers when we are asking questions to our students. I find them very interesting and useful and I hope you do too