[ola] Asking Questions
- From: "Gmail" <inashland@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <ola@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 08:06:12 -0600
Questions
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Amanda -
Yes, by definition, an Intermediate speaker/writer must be able to prove the
ability to ask a variety of question. One idea I used with a lot of success
was to have five questions, as much as possible linked or follow-up
questions, written on the board. Students would stand back to back and
student A would read/ask the questions of student B who could only listen to
the questions and respond. Once those five questions were done with, they
changed places and another set of 5 questions were shown. Key to this is
teaching kids to follow up with their own follow up questions other than
"Why?"
Example 1: Student A asks student B this question - Do you think cats are
smarter than dogs or do you think dogs are smarter than cats? Student B
answers, The follow up question is, "Can you give me one example to prove
your point?
Example 2: Student A asks student B this question - Do you prefer to live in
a small town, like Central Point, or a large city, like Chicago? After the
answer, the follow up: What advantages or disadvantages can you think of for
living in a large city/or a small city?
You can adapt these questions to your needs. But it was a warm up activity
for a few minutes while I took role. Then I'd ask these questions to the
class and get volunteers to answer, and there were natural conversations
that grew out of each of the questions. Now, this is not an activity to do
every day as it would get old, but when I thought of good questions, it was
something to do. The kids saw questions, heard them, and eventually were
able to ask their own.
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Hi,
I've been pondering something the past few days. My students are 9th
graders, (they've had a year and a half of Spanish prior to this), and the
goal is to get them to the NH/IL level by the end of the year. It's my
understanding that an important marker of the Intermediate level is asking
questions. Some of the students do this with ease already, which is great!
My wonderings are around how to get certain students to ask questions in
Spanish, when they struggle to ask questions in English. perhaps due to lack
of interest or curiosity in general. This is kind of along the same lines of
"can younger learners attain Superior level proficiency in the second
language", because they are unlikely to be thinking abstractly even in their
native language.
A more concrete question- how have you been practicing question-asking with
your students? I struggle to make the topics broad. I had some success once
with the prompt "I have a new roommate- ask me questions".
Thanks for your thoughts! Have a wonderful weekend :)
-Amanda
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