Reading in a Second Language 7
Asking questions |
Teachers use questions for a variety of reasons
to discover pupils' previous understanding of a topic
to focus pupils' attention on key aspects of a topic or text
to assist pupils to see the logical development of a text
to check and support pupils' understanding
etc. etc.
Many answers have been given to the question `How do we know if the children in our class have understood what they have read?' including the clairvoyant's answer: `I can tell by their faces'! Often teachers rely on asking pupils to read aloud and then assume that if they can read fluently they must understand the passage. Unfortunately this is a very inaccurate way of judging understanding - we can read:
`'Twas brillig and the slythy toath did gyre and gimble in the wabe'
very fluently but with no understanding at all!
Many teachers therefore use questions to check pupils' understanding. Unfortunately pupils' ability to answer questions does not necessary demonstrate that they have understood anything. The following sentence can be understood by no one, because the three key words in the sentence have been replaced by nonsense words:
`In 1922, whilst fighting an intradle, John glunked Peter with his gurkey'.
However, it is quite possible to ask and answer correctly many questions about this sentence, for example:
a) Who fought an intradle?
b) When did they fight it?
c) Who glunked Peter?
d) What was he doing at the time?
e) What was John holding?
f) What did he glunk Peter with?
g) Who was glunked?
h) Was John killed in the First World War?
i) Did John glunk at Peter with an intradle?
Asking `Do you understand?' is no better as most children are too shy to admit that they don't. We need to consider what types of questions we can use both to encourage and to check our pupils' understanding.
`Levels' of comprehension questions
Consider the following passage. Each of the questions below it asks for a different aspect of comprehension.
Flooding of the Nile.
The great river Nile flows gently in is course through the hot plains in the first half of the year but later on when the melting snows and the rains on the mountains far to the south swell it tributaries, the Nile overflows. It spreads rich, muddy soil from Ethiopia over its valley and forms deep stretches of green, fertile lands, along its bank. The settlers found that in the soft rich earth, barley and wheat and other crops could be planted, even without the use of the plough, and they began to make many settlements of farmers.
Questions:
1. What crops did the settlers find could be planted in the soft, rich earth?
2. Why is the muddy soil called `rich'?
3. Without looking at an atlas, draw a rough sketch map that shows the Nile, its tributaries, the mountains, the plains and the fertile land.
4. Why do you think people settled near the Nile?
5. Compare the Nile to the River Thames.
6. How does the writer persuade you that the Nile is a good river?
7. In what ways is this passage interesting or boring?
Each of these questions represents a different level of comprehension - these are discussed on the next page.
Question No. 1 - What crops did the settlers find could be planted in the soft, rich earth?
This question is an example of literal comprehension. The pupils are asked to recognise or recall a fact (or it could be a sequence, comparison, cause, etc.) that is explicitly stated in the text.
Question No. 2 - Why is the muddy soil called `rich'?
This question looks at the pupils' knowledge of vocabulary in context.
Question No. 3 - Without looking at an atlas, draw a rough sketch map that shows the Nile, its tributaries, the mountains, the plains and the fertile land.
This question asks the pupils to reorganise the information given in the passage. This particular example is difficult and involves other sorts of comprehension as well (see questions 2, 4, 5).
Question No. 4 - Why do you think people settled near the Nile?
This question is an example of deductive comprehension. The pupils are required to deduce reasons that are not explicitly stated in the text.
Question No. 5 - Compare the Nile to the River Thames.
This question requires the collation of facts, etc. from different sources. One of the sources might be the pupils' previous knowledge.
Question No. 6 - How does the writer persuade you that the Nile is a good river?
This question asks the pupils to evaluate the passage. An evaluative question might ask if a passage is true, logical, helpful, or moral.
Question No. 7 - In what ways is this passage interesting or boring?
This question ask for appreciation. Questions like this look for the pupils' emotional response, which is not entirely appropriate for a passage like this. Questions on appreciation might ask how a pupil felt about the whole of a story or about a character in a story, etc.
It is a salutary exercise to look at the questions that are asked in textbooks. All too frequently the questions ask for literal comprehension, often the answers can be copied directly from the text. These questions are important, but like the questions about the intradle and the gurkey, they do not check understanding. Many pupils develop a technique for answering them that depends on a quick skim of the text and nothing else. We should prefer books that ask a wide range of comprehension questions.
Answer forms
As well as using only one level of comprehension, many books (and worksheets) ask for only one form of response, i.e. a sentence answer to a question. (How many books contain the instruction `Answer the following questions using complete sentences'?) There are, however, very many different responses we could expect of our pupils.
Because many pupils for whom English is an additional language have difficulty in forming accurate sentences, it is often useful to give them closed questions, i.e. questions for which there is only one correct answer. The following are some examples:
1. Yes/No questions
For example: Did the settlers need ploughs?
2. Either/or questions
For example: Is the River Nile a big river or a small river?
3. True/false
For example: The Nile spreads rich soil over its valley in Ethiopia. True/false?
4. Multiple choice questions
For example: The settlers began farming in the Nile Valley because...
a) They did not realise the river would overflow.
b) They discovered the soil was fertile.
c) They realised their crops depend on the floods.
5. Matching beginnings and ends of sentences, for example:
The Nile floods The rich soil The farmers settled |
comes from Ethiopia. near the Nile. in the second half of the year. |
N.B. Although the forms of these questions help the second language learner, none of them is a literal comprehension question, all of them check understanding.
We can also ask our pupils to draw pictures, maps, charts, graphs, diagrams, etc. from information drawn from the text. This means that pupils learning English as an additional language do not have to struggle to express complicated ideas in English, but such activities do help them (and indeed all pupils!) to work out the meaning of a passage and check understanding.
Oral questioning
One further consideration remains, namely `What sort of oral questioning techniques should a teacher use in class?'
The two techniques very frequently used are:
1. The teacher asks the class a question, then chooses one pupil to answer.
2. The teacher gives the pupils some questions to answer individually in writing.
The first technique has the disadvantage that only one pupil is usually required to answer, the others often do not hear or understand the answer given by that particular pupil. Many of the other pupils do not in fact pay attention to the answer at all! The second technique usually means there is a long delay between the pupils answering the question and their being given any feedback. This often precludes them thinking deeply or changing any misconceptions they may have.
We need a method that will involve all the pupils but which will give them feedback quite quickly. One way to do this is to use buzz groups, i.e. split the class into groups of two or three and ask the groups to discuss the questions. This is particularly valuable with deductive questions. At the end of a short time the groups share and discuss their answers. Some lively discussion can follow that allows the pupils to question and justify their decision.
Britton, Martin and Rosen in their book Language as education put the need for talk in very strong terms:
So much masquerades under the disguise of `discussion' which has no resemblance at all to human beings genuinely thrashing out a problem, pooling experience and speculating. Classrooms of 30-35 pupils putting their hands up (or not) to edge in a word or two do not lend themselves to mastery of the spoken language. There is an urgent need to explore new ways of working which will permit real talk.
And N. Flanders, in Analysing Teacher Behaviour, claims that:
Two-thirds of each lesson is taken up with talk, and two-thirds of that is done by the teacher. If the remainder of a 45 minute lesson is split equally among 30 pupils, each would have twenty seconds.
CONCLUSION
Asking questions is more complicated than it appears at first and frequently our questions do little more than pass the time. Helping our pupils to understand may involve a re-think of the questions we use, the responses we expect of our pupils and the way we organise our classrooms.
Racing to English
© Gordon Ward 2010. Photocopiable only for use in the purchasing institution. Advice for Staff: Reading in a Second Language