Learning How to Ask Questions - December 03, 2024

0:01For VOA Learning English, this is The Education Report. Suzanne Meyer, the Assistant Director of the English Language Institute at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, says that many students need to develop critical thinking skills. In other words, students need learn how to collect information and then evaluate We need to get students actively engaged in inquiry from the beginning levels on into those levels where they really are close to professional and university context. One way to develop critical thinking skills, Meyer says, is to teach students to be creative about the types of questions that they ask. Meyer says that there are many benefits to using question asking activities with English

1:10learners. Question asking activities help students to become better language learners, she says. Question asking overall helps students be a better language learner and not for the obvious because you ask a question you get an answer but often questions are the first point of contact. And so if my question is not good, then that's going to direct the level of our conversation. Meyer also says that question asking may help develop critical thinking skills by allowing for more interactions. People who can ask questions are very confident and when you're confident you can have more interaction that extra interaction might lead to critical thinking because you're more likely There are many strategies to improve question asking and develop critical thinking skills.

2:22One possible strategy, says Meyer, is to use question-asking patterns that start with concrete Create Questions and move to Abstract Questions So, for example, if students were reading a new text, they would design a series of questions using three different steps. In the first step, students create questions about information in the text that they are reading. In the second step, students create questions about how the information in the text connects to their own life. In the third step, student create questions about abstract ideas, ideas that came up in the questions about themselves. If students follow these three steps, they have not only practiced creative ways to ask questions, they have also started practicing critical thinking.

3:31Meyer gave an example of what this activity could look like. In the activity, students read part of a story. In this case, the story is about how different foods affect a person. In the first column, there are questions about information in the text. One example of a question is this. How can food help a person's performance? In the second column, there are questions about how the information in the story connects to students' lives. For example, how do I feel and act when I don't eat well? In the third column, they are questions abstract ideas that build on questions in the second column. The question, even though people know some foods are unhealthy, why do they eat them? is one example. These questions, and other questions listed in the table, are examples of how to develop

4:42questions. You should, of course, create your own questions. Meyer says that when teachers tell students which questions to answer, students are less likely to be creative about the types of questions that they ask. So practice developing your own questions. Try making a list of questions that go from concrete to abstract, like the steps outlined above. Check with your teacher to make sure that your grammar is correct and try to practice in the classroom. You can also write us your questions about this story in the comments section or on our Facebook page. Give question asking a try, and let us know how it works for you. I'm John Russell.