Skill of fluency in questioning
- 1. 6. SKILL OF FLUENCY IN QUESTIONING Dr SAJEENA S.
- 2. ◦ Questioning skill may be defined as a teaching skill helpful in putting the desired, meaningful, clear and concise, grammatically correct, simple and quite straight forward questions to the students in a classroom teaching learning situation for the purpose of drawing their attention on one or the other teaching points, making them active and alert in the ongoing teaching learning process.
- 3. ◦ Components A. Framing of the questions: Questions can serve their purpose well when they are framed with necessary care and preparation on the part of a teacher by taking cognition of the following things: ◦ 1.Relevancy: Questions framed should be quite relevant to the topic being taught. There stands no use of the irrelevant questions being framed and put to the students at any stage of the lesson. Moreover, these may prove a great hindrance in the process of teaching- learning by getting them astray from their learning path and confused for responding properly to them. ◦ 2. Clarity: The question should be framed in a simple and clear language. Ambiguity of any kind may kill the very purpose of putting questions. In a case when the students are not able to understand the meaning, nature and motive of the question put to them how they can be expected to respond to it properly.
- 4. ◦ 3. Precision or conciseness: Brevity is said to the soul of expression. As a result, while framing the questions, due care should be taken for keeping them as precise and brief as possible. ◦ 4. Specification: The questions framed should be quite specific and to the point related to the content material presented to the students, the demand of the specific stage of the lesson or the purpose to be served by it. So due care should be taken to frame such questions that may allow to ask only one specific thing at a time to the students. ◦ 5. Grammatically correct: It should be duly cared that the framed question should be grammatically correct. Failure to do so may confuse the students or may not help them in their proper understanding of the nature and meaning of the question.
- 5. ◦ B. Presentation of questions in the class: The questioning skill asks for the proper presentation of the questions in the class on the part of a subject teacher. It calls usually for playing attention over the following components: ◦ 1. Voice of the teacher: A teacher should try to present the questions in a quite clear and audible voice being properly heard by all the students. He should also be careful about the proper accent, tone, pitch and rhythm of voice along with the accompanying gestures and other non-verbal expressions while putting any question. ◦ 2. Speed and pause: Due care should be taken for maintenance of proper speed in the asking of questions on the part of the teacher. He should give enough time to a student or the class for responding to the question asked by him on a simple logic that the rate or speed of thinking and responding on the part of the students tends to be slower than the speed of asking questions.
- 6. ◦ 3. Distribution of questions: Question should be addressed to the whole class rather than its being put to an individual student. Out of the raised hands of the students who are willing to answer the question, a teacher may now provide opportunity to any one of them, or may choose from the group of the students who have not raised their hands for the purpose. As far as possible, the distribution of the questions must be quite fair and even all along the corners of the class. As a result, every student of the class must feel that he may be asked to respond to a question any time during the course of the lesson, therefore, he must remain quite alert and attentive to things going on in the classroom.
- 7. ◦ 4. Teacher behaviour: A teacher must demonstrate a quite spontaneous and natural behaviour while asking questions in the class. He must possess a necessary degree of patience, restraint and sweetness in his voice and style of asking questions as well as responding to the responses of the students. He should not try to repeat the questions as it may result in developing a wrong habit among the students for not attending the questions properly. He should also try to refrain himself from the task of discouraging or ridiculing them for their incorrect answer or no responding. By all means, he should try to reinforce their responding behaviour through his pleasant behaviour.
- 8. ◦ Each question is followed by a variety of student responses, such as no response, wrong response, partially correct response. Let us consider the five response situations: 1. No response situation: This situation may be due to student’s inability to understand the question, to structured response, or due to lack of requisite facts needed for the purpose or responding or the failure to recall the related facts. 2. Wrong response situation: Wrong response to a question indicates the lack of knowledge of facts concepts and generalizations on the part of the student.
- 9. 3. Partially correct response situation: They represent a partial knowledge of facts, concepts and generalization on the part of the students. 4. Incomplete response situation: Sometimes when an incomplete response situation occurs, we infer that either the student is not having the necessary facts, concepts or generalization in his memory or it may be due to his inability to understand and structure responses to the question. 5. Correct response situation: Correct response situation refers to the statements expressed by the student.
- 10. teacher: Class: Session: Teach/Re- teach Concept/Topic: Supervisor: Tallies Components of the skill Ratings (Extremely poor to Excellent) Framing of questions i) Relevancy ii) Conciseness iii) Clarity iv) Specificity v) Grammatical correctness Presentation of the questions i) Voice ii) Speed and pause iii) Distribution of questions to Whole class To student volunteers To student non-volunteers 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6