The right question at the right time

As part of my Master’s in TESOL some 15 years ago, I audio-recorded two different teachers’ classes as part of a module on discourse analysis. Of intrigue was that one teacher used a lot of regular questions but yielded very limited or shallow responses, while the other teacher’s ‘questioning’ technique involved getting learners to complete the sentence that he started to utter, generating impressively rich responses. All of the questioning by the first teacher had seemed to have gone to waste. But maybe it isn’t that questions themselves are useless. Perhaps it’s more about knowing which questions to ask and when to pull them out of the hat. Cracking this is something that I still struggle with.

Critical thinking, Bloom’s taxonomy, and aiming high

A few years after my MA research, the buzzword ‘critical thinking’ entered ELT. The buzzword became an underpinning behind many presentations, coursebooks, and syllabi. Bloom’s taxonomy has been frequently referred to as the model of how critical thinking ‘works’. First created in the 1950s, Bloom’s taxonomy offers a hierarchical schematic of different types of cognitive input/output (see Figure 1). At the bottom of the hierarchy, ‘remember’ refers to learning information by rote. This can be achieved by drilling, rudimentary ‘yes/no’ questioning, or the dissemination of word lists for learners to memorize. Teachers have been encouraged to try and avoid or get their learners out of this supposed ‘lower-order thinking.’

Many English language teachers now include higher-order, free-thinking and creative activities in their classrooms in recognition of the need to foster greater autonomy and lateral thinking in problem-solving. These latter two skills become particularly important when learners move into a tertiary learning environment and no longer have a teacher standing in front of them all day long.

Figure 1. Bloom’s taxonomy pyramid showing the progression from lower- to higher-order thinking skills.

Another model, or rather, theory, that implicates the need for effective classroom questioning involves Krashen’s i+1 input hypothesis (Krashen 1981) – the idea here being that we need to incrementally increase the level of language input/output so that learners can progress.

However, even for experienced teachers like myself, I find that when I am in the very busy moment of trying to keep twenty-plus individuals with varying English language skills all adequately engaged, I struggle to create the headspace to be able to think about what is the best question I can ask. I notice myself all too often resorting to the question ‘Why do you think that?’ and then just nodding and saying ‘good’ to all responses. Likewise, coursebooks don’t tend to teach deep questioning. I come away wondering if my learners are being sufficiently challenged or if I am simply very good at keeping them talking to fill time.

Socratic questions

It was after undertaking the reading for my Delta Module 3 that I came across a table in an article by Cheong and Cheung (2008) and had the idea that this table could be adapted into a convenient ‘cheatsheet’ to address the limited question repertoire.

Cheong and Cheung wanted to assess the degree of information processing by school pupils on an online discussion board – was it surface or in-depth processing? (echoing Bloom’s hierarchy of thinking). As part of their discussion, they cite others who draw attention to the importance of good questioning techniques, for example, ‘MacKnight … remarked that questions that focus on the fundamentals of thought and reasoning form the baseline of critical thinking’ (Cheong & Cheung, 2008).

Cheong and Cheung reference Socratic questioning, an approach to questioning based on the ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates, and which has had an indelible impact on western scholarly thinking. Through careful question choice, assumptions and beliefs can be challenged and individuals can be encouraged to look at something from different perspectives and to broaden their understanding. Cheong and Cheung devised a table based on the list of Socratic Questions (n.d.) found on the Changing Minds website (www.changingminds.org). The purpose of their table was to provide question prompts that could be used to help learners develop richer online discussion.

Adapting both Cheong and Cheung’s and the Socratic Questions list, the resulting list of questions (Table 1) can be displayed on the wall or taped to the back of a book for quick reference. All of these questions fulfil the evaluate and analyze bands of Bloom’s hierarchy. The questions might look very advanced, but you could simplify some of them – ‘Why are you saying that?’ can become ‘Why?’ or ‘Give me one reason,’ etc. The main point is that learners should be encouraged to expand on their answer to the extent that they elaborate on their thinking process as part of their explanation why they thought/said something. Others can be invited to help develop peers’ ideas. With that, it’s important to pre-empt any sense of individuals feeling ‘attacked’ by explaining this questioning approach.

Table 1. Socratic questions: The questions in the second column can be follow-up questions to the questions in the first column.

A great entry point to using this table is in conjunction with displaying one of the photographs from The New York Times’ ‘What’s Going On in This Picture?’ webpage. Images of curious scenes from around the world are posted here each week with the purpose of encouraging school-age children to discuss what they see via a comments thread. One example picture is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Probing into the real details of learners’ beliefs and attitudes using What’s Going On in This Picture?

Applying the Socratic questioning with a ‘What’s Going On in This Picture?’ picture can form a lesson that introduces learners to the goal of formulating more effective questions. Such a lesson is applicable to both online and face-to-face classrooms, and could follow these steps:

• Ask/Explain to the class why it’s important to ask (different types of) questions.
• Re-cap on the difference between open-ended questions and closed questions.
• Elicit some open-ended questions and list these on the board/screen.
• Add some new questions to the list (refer to Table 1).
• If used, ensure learners understand words such as ‘assumption,’ ‘perspective,’ ‘disproven.’
• Select one of the new questions and elicit: what type of information should the answer contain (e.g., a paraphrase, more detail, acknowledgement of limited understanding); actual example responses; when it might be appropriate to ask that question (e.g., when someone’s idea is biased).
• Explain that the rest of the lesson will be about practising these questions.
• Display a photograph from ‘What’s Going On in This Picture?’ and ask ‘What’s going on in this picture?’
• Ask follow-up questions in response to learner comments (see example below).
• Reveal the story behind the picture (an explanation is posted on the website several days after a new image is posted) and give feedback on the learner responses.
• Put learners into pairs/threes and give them a new picture to ask and answer questions about.
• Each group presents their picture and their ideas about the picture to the rest of the class.

Here is an example of a possible question–response exchange, using the photograph in Figure 2 with some of the Socratic questions from Table 1:

There could also be questioning around the woman lying on the floor – is she looking at something, or is she fainting? The significance of the roses and/or the colours of the flowers could also generate speculation. If the picture is very difficult to interpret, insert some extra clues when the discussion starts to quieten or if learners sound frustrated. Eventually you can reveal the actual information behind the picture. In this example, in case you were wondering, the women are outside of the U.S. Supreme Court, mourning the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The actual answer can be compared with some of the responses that learners had given, and that any gaps in their interpretation can help them understand what information they need to have in order to give a fair representation of a topic. This can ultimately feed in to developing research skills.

Conclusion

Developing my own awareness of the effective use of questions has helped me identify where I can help both myself and my learners become better communicators. After having introduced Socratic questioning to my learners, I aim to re-use one question in each subsequent lesson. Trying to over-repeatedly force in all questions becomes inauthentic and leads to early fatigue. (Not all the questions in Table 1 would be applicable to all texts or images in any case.) Learners are, however, reminded at intervals that it’s important for them – not just the teacher – to ask good questions. I include occasional activities that explicitly remind them of the taught questions. For example, I give each learner a sticky note with one question on it that they have to use during that class. These sticky notes can be recycled and re-distributed for the same purpose a few lessons later on. With online learning, it’s also been really useful to be able to watch recordings and download transcripts of my lessons. By way of action research, I’ve been able to compare early discussions with later discussions and track the development of inquiry in both myself and my learners. It’s great when I notice a learner using one of the new questions without any prompting.

References

Cheong CM & Cheung WS (2008) ‘Online discussion and critical thinking skills: A case study in a Singapore secondary school’. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology and Society 24 (5) 556‐ 573.

Krashen SD (1981) Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. Oxford: Pergamon

The New York Times. (n.d.). What’s Going On in This Picture? Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/column/learning-whats-going-on-in-this-picture

Socratic Questions. Changing Minds (n.d.). Available at: https://changingminds.org/techniques/questioning/socratic_questions.htm