Questioning Skills in the Language and Literature Class

Marla C. Papango
Philippine Normal University
College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature
English Department

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A. Importance of Teacher Questioning Skills

Could you live without asking questions in the classroom? Why do you think questioning skills are
extremely important to teachers? List your answers below.

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B. Stages students go through to produce a response

Whenever teachers ask questions, students go through the following stages before they are able to
answer a question.
1. Attending to the question
2. Deciphering the meaning of the question
3. Generating a covert response (i.e., formulating a response in one's mind)
4. Generating an overt response; and often
5. Revising the response (based on teacher probing or other feedback)
C. Levels of Questioning
Classroom questions may be classified into several levels from the low inquiry to the higher inquiry
types. Summarized below are some of the categorizations made by various theorists.

LOW INQUIRY HIGH INQUIRY

Structured Open-ended
Simple cognitive abilities More complex cognitively
Teacher dominated Greater student involvement

Bloom:
Knowledge--Comprehension—Application--Analysis--Synthesis--Evaluation

Sanders:
Memory--Translation--Interpretation--Application--Analysis--Synthesis--Evaluation

Aschner:
Memory--Reasoning--Evaluating or Judging--Creative Thinking

Carner:
Concrete.... Abstract.... Creative
Pate &
Bremer: Convergent.... Divergent

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D. Taxonomy of Cognitive Levels
Listed below are the two cognitive levels created by Benjamin Bloom and his student Lorin Anderson.

Bloom's Taxonomy (1956) Anderson’s Taxonomy (2001)

1. Knowledge - Remembering previously learned 1. Remembering: Retrieving, recognizing, and

material, e.g., definitions, concepts, principles,
formulas.
2. Comprehension - Understanding the meaning
of remembered material, usually demonstrated
by explaining in one's own words or citing
examples.
3. Application - Using information in a new
context to solve a problem, to answer a
question, or to perform another task. The
information used may be rules, principles,
formulas, theories, concepts, or procedures.
4. Analysis - Breaking a piece of material into its
parts and explaining the relationship between
the parts.
5. Synthesis - Putting parts together to form a
new whole, pattern or structure.
6. Evaluation - Using a set of criteria, established
by the student or specified by the Teacher, to
arrive at a reasoned judgment.
recalling relevant knowledge from long-term
memory.
2. Understanding: Constructing meaning from
oral, written, and graphic messages through
interpreting, exemplifying, classifying,
summarizing, inferring, comparing, and
explaining.
3. Applying: Carrying out or using a procedure
through executing, or implementing.
4. Analyzing: Breaking material into constituent
parts, determining how the parts relate to one
another and to an overall structure or purpose
through differentiating, organizing, and
attributing.
5. Evaluating: Making judgments based on
criteria and standards through checking and
critiquing.
6. Creating: Putting elements together to form a
coherent or functional whole; reorganizing
elements into a new pattern or structure
through generating, planning, or producing.

E. Lower and Higher Level Questions

At times instead of referring to a specific level of the taxonomy people refer to "lower-level" and "higher-
level" questions or behaviors. Lower level questions are those at the knowledge, comprehension, and
simple application levels of the taxonomy. Higher-level questions are those requiring complex application
(e.g., analysis, synthesis, and evaluation skills).

Usually questions at the lower levels are appropriate for:

 evaluating students' preparation and comprehension.
 diagnosing students' strengths and weaknesses.
 reviewing and/or summarizing content.
Questions at higher levels of the taxonomy are usually most appropriate for:
 encouraging students to think more deeply and critically
 problem solving
 encouraging discussions
 stimulating students to seek information on their own

F. Open/Divergent and Closed/Convergent Questions (A CLARIFICATION)

Generally, teachers believe that closed questions are low level ones, while open questions are high level
ones. Analyze these examples to find out why such is not always the case.
 Closed/Convergent question - there are a limited number of acceptable answers, most of which
will usually be anticipated by the Teacher.
 Open/Divergent question - there are many acceptable answers, most of which will not be
anticipated by the Teacher.
Both open and closed questions may be at any level of the taxonomy.
An open low-level question might be:
 "What is an example of an adjective?"
An open high-level question might be:
 "What are some ways we might solve the energy crisis?"
A closed low-level question:
 "What is an adjective?" (Recall question that requires one answer)
A closed high-level question:
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  What is the adverbial in the given sentence below? (Analysis question that requires one answer)

G. Guidelines for Classroom Questioning

The following guidelines are based on a study conducted by Kathleen Cotton published in the
Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL) School Improvement Research Series.
1. Incorporate questioning into classroom teaching/learning practices.
2. Ask questions which focus on the salient elements in the lesson; avoid questioning students
about extraneous matters.
3. When teaching students factual material, keep up a brisk instructional pace, frequently posing
lower cognitive questions.
4. With older and higher ability students, ask questions before (as well as after) material is read and
studied.
5. Question younger and lower ability students only after material has been read and studied.
6. Ask a majority of lower cognitive questions when instructing younger and lower ability
students. Structure these questions so that most of them will elicit correct responses.
7. Ask a majority of higher cognitive questions when instructing older and higher ability
students.
8. In settings where higher cognitive questions are appropriate, teach students strategies for
drawing inferences.
9. Keep wait-time to about three seconds when conducting recitations involving a majority of
lower cognitive questions.
10. Increase wait-time beyond three seconds when asking higher cognitive questions.
11. Be particularly careful to allow generous amounts of wait-time to students perceived as lower
ability.
12. Use redirection and probing as part of classroom questioning and keep these focused on
salient elements of students' responses.
13. Avoid vague or critical responses to student answers during recitations.
14. During recitations, use praise sparingly and make certain it is sincere, credible, and directly
connected to the students' responses.

Activity 1. Pretend you will teach one of the stories below. What questions will you ask to help your
students understand the story? Consider the different levels in asking questions. Ask from low to high
level questions. Use Worksheets 1 and 2 to list and identify the level of your questions.

Text A. Children’s Literature

The TRUE STORY OF THE THREE LITTLE PIGS
Jon Scieszka
Way back in Once Upon a Time time, I was making a birthday cake for my
dear old granny. I had a terrible sneezing cold. I ran out of sugar. So I
walked down the street to ask my neighbor for a cup of sugar. Now this
neighbor was a pig. And he wasn't too bright either. He had built his whole
house out of straw. Can you believe it? I mean who in his right mind would
build a house of straw? So of course the minute I knocked on the door, it fell
right in. I didn't want to just walk into someone else's house. So I called,
"Little Pig, Little Pig, are you in?" No answer. I was just about to go home
without the cup of sugar for my dear old granny's birthday cake.
That's when my nose started to itch. I felt a sneeze coming on. Well I huffed. And I snuffed. And I
sneezed a great sneeze.
And you know what? The whole darn straw house fell down. And right in the middle of the pile of straw
was the First Little Pig - dead as a doornail. He had been home the whole time. It seemed like a shame
to leave a perfectly good ham dinner lying there in the straw. So I ate it up. Think of it as a cheeseburger
just lying there. I was feeling a little better. But I still didn't have my cup of sugar. So I went to the next
neighbor's house. This neighbor was the First Little Pig's brother. He was a little smarter, but not much.
He has built his house of sticks. I rang the bell on the stick house. Nobody answered. I called, "Mr. Pig,
Mr. Pig, are you in?" He yelled back.” Go away wolf. You can't come in. I'm shaving the hairs on my
shinny chin chin."
I had just grabbed the doorknob when I felt another sneeze coming on. I huffed. And I snuffed. And I
tried to cover my mouth, but I sneezed a great sneeze.
And you are not going to believe this, but the guy's house fell down just like his brother's. When the dust
cleared, there was the Second Little Pig - dead as a doornail. Wolf's honor. Now you know food will spoil
MCPapango_Questioning Skills 3
if you just leave it out in the open. So I did the only thing there was to do. I had dinner again. Think of it
as a second helping. I was getting awfully full. But my cold was feeling a little better. And I still didn't have
that cup of sugar for my dear old granny's birthday cake. So I went to the next house. This guy was the
First and Second Little Pig's brother. He must have been the brains of the family. He had built his house
of bricks. I knocked on the brick house. No answer. I called, "Mr. Pig, Mr. Pig, are you in?" And do you
know what that rude little porker answered? "Get out of here, Wolf. Don't bother me again."
Talk about impolite! He probably had a whole sackful of sugar. And he wouldn't give me even one little
cup for my dear sweet old granny's birthday cake. What a pig!
I was just about to go home and maybe make a nice birthday card instead of a cake, when I felt my cold
coming on. I huffed And I snuffed. And I sneezed once again.
Then the Third Little Pig yelled, “And your old granny can sit on a pin!" Now I'm usually a pretty calm
fellow. But when somebody talks about my granny like that, I go a Little crazy. When the cops drove up,
of course I was trying to break down this Pig's door. And the whole time I was huffing and puffing and
sneezing and making a real scene.
The rest as they say is history.
The news reporters found out about the two pigs I had for dinner. They figured a sick guy going to
borrow a cup of sugar didn't sound very exciting.
So they jazzed up the story with all of that "Huff and puff and blow your house down"

And they made me the Big Bad Wolf. That's it. The real story. I was framed. " (721 words)

TEXT B The Princess Who Would Not Sleep

by Feny de los Angeles Bautista
Do you know the story about the princess who would not sleep? Let’s see if she can solve her
problem . . . .
In a kingdom far away, every night at bedtime, people would hear Princess Aya say: “I DO
NOT WANT TO SLEEP!”
The softest beds were ready for her. The Queen sang. The King had a big fan to keep her
cool. But Princess Aya could not sleep!
The King and Queen asked everyone for help.
A doctor came first. “I will give you some medicine to put you to sleep,” he told the
Princess. But the Princess would not open her mouth.
“Look, Princess,” said the doctor, “your mother, the Queen, will taste the medicine.”
The Queen took the medicine and fell asleep.
The next day, some dancers came. They came to dance with the Princess until she
became tired. And when she was tired, they said, the Princess will sleep.
They danced a long time, and soon the dancers were tired. They were so tired that they fell
asleep. But Princess Aya was wide-awake. “Let us dance some more!” she said.
A magician came. “Vavajing! Fafazung!” he said. Ten birds came flying in. Ten hens
came chuckling in. But Princess Aya was still awake.
One night, a grandmother came to the palace.
“Will you sing to her? Or dance?” asked the King.
“How will you make her sleep?” asked the Queen.
The grandmother smiled. She asked Princess Aya to lie down. Then she sat down beside
her. She took a book from her bag. She began to read: “In a kingdom far away, every night at
bedtime, people would hear Princess Aya say, “I DO NOT WANT TO SLEEP!”
“Where is the picture? Please show me the picture!” Princess Aya said politely.
“Close your eyes. You will see the picture in your mind,” the grandmother said.
Princess Aya closed her eyes. The grandmother continued to read. Soon the Princess
was asleep. The moon and the stars peeped through the window. They smiled to see their little
friend sleeping so sweetly. From then on, the King and Queen knew what to do to help Princess
Aya go to sleep.

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TEXT C
The Flowers
Alice Walker

It seemed to Myop as she skipped lightly from hen house to pigpen to smokehouse that the days had
never been as beautiful as these. The air held a keenness that made her nose twitch. The harvesting of
the corn and cotton, peanuts and squash, made each day a golden surprise that caused excited little
tremors to run up her jaws.

Myop carried a short, knobby stick. She struck out at random at chickens she liked, and worked out the
beat of a song on the fence around the pigpen. She felt light and good in the warm sun. She was ten,
and nothing existed for her but her song, the stick clutched in her dark brown hand, and the tat-de-ta-ta-
ta of accompaniment,

Turning her back on the rusty boards of her family's sharecropper cabin, Myop walked along the fence till
it ran into the stream made by the spring. Around the spring, where the family got drinking water, silver
ferns and wildflowers grew. Along the shallow banks pigs rooted. Myop watched the tiny white bubbles
disrupt the thin black scale of soil and the water that silently rose and slid away down the stream.

She had explored the woods behind the house many times. Often, in late autumn, her mother took her to
gather nuts among the fallen leaves. Today she made her own path, bouncing this way and that way,
vaguely keeping an eye out for snakes. She found, in addition to various common but pretty ferns and
leaves, an armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges and a sweet suds bush full of the brown,
fragrant buds.

By twelve o'clock, her arms laden with sprigs of her findings, she was a mile or more from home. She
had often been as far before, but the strangeness of the land made it not as pleasant as her usual
haunts. It seemed gloomy in the little cove in which she found herself. The air was damp, the silence
close and deep.

Myop began to circle back to the house, back to the peacefulness of the morning. It was then she
stepped smack into his eyes. Her heel became lodged in the broken ridge between brow and nose, and
she reached down quickly, unafraid, to free herself. It was only when she saw his naked grin that she
gave a little yelp of surprise.

He had been a tall man. From feet to neck covered a long space. His head lay beside him. When she
pushed back the leaves and layers of earth and debris Myop saw that he'd had large white teeth, all of
them cracked or broken, long fingers, and very big bones. All his clothes had rotted away except some
threads of blue denim from his overalls. The buckles of the overall had turned green.

Myop gazed around the spot with interest. Very near where she'd stepped into the head was a wild pink
rose. As she picked it to add to her bundle she noticed a raised mound, a ring, around the rose's root. It
was the rotted remains of a noose, a bit of shredding plowline, now blending benignly into the soil.
Around an overhanging limb of a great spreading oak clung another piece. Frayed, rotted, bleached, and
frazzled--barely there--but spinning restlessly in the breeze. Myop laid down her flowers.

And the summer was over.

SOURCE: Reading and Writing about Short Fiction. Ed. Edward Proffitt. NY: Harcourt, 1988. 404-05.

Worksheet 1
Formulating Questions

Article Title: ______________________________________________

Subject: _________________________________________________

List a MINIMUM of 10 questions for the text you have chosen. (Use a separate sheet.)

1. ________________________________________________________________________________

2. ________________________________________________________________________________
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3. ________________________________________________________________________________

4. ________________________________________________________________________________

5. ________________________________________________________________________________

6. ________________________________________________________________________________

7. ________________________________________________________________________________

8. ________________________________________________________________________________

9. ________________________________________________________________________________

10. ________________________________________________________________________________

Worksheet 2
Evaluating Questions

Evaluate the level of each question you formulated in Worksheet 1. Then, add the total number
of questions you asked per level.

Question Knowledge Comprehension Analysis Application Synthesis Evaluation

No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
TOTAL

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
 Why did you choose the story you have chosen?
 What kinds (re Level) of questions did you generally ask? Did you ask more of low or high level
questions?
 Which type of question did you find easy to phrase/prepare? Why do you think such is the case?
 Which of the questions do you think students would enjoy answering? Why?

H. Questioning Strategies
1. Reinforcement
 The Teacher can reinforce by making positive statements and using positive nonverbal
communication. Proper nonverbal responses include smiling, nodding, and maintaining eye
contact, while improper nonverbal responses include looking at notes while students
speak, looking at the board or ruffling papers.
The type of reinforcement provided will be determined by:
o The correctness of the answer
o The number of times a student has responded
 Vary reinforcement techniques between various verbal statements and nonverbal reactions.
 Try not to overuse reinforcement in the classroom by overly praising every student comment.
 Students begin to question the sincerity of reinforcement if every response is reinforced
equally or in the same way.
MCPapango_Questioning Skills 6
 2. Probe
 Ask probing questions to make students explore initial comments. Probes are useful in getting
students more involved in critical analysis of their own and other students' ideas.
.

Example:
Teacher: What do you think about what the Wolf did to the Second Little Pig?
Student: I think the Wolf is really bad after all.
Teacher: Why do you think so?

3. Adjust/Refocus
When students provide responses which appear out of context, ask refocusing questions to
encourage them to link their responses to the content being discussed. This technique is also
used to shift attention to a new topic.

Example:
Teacher: Why was the Wolf explaining his side of the story?
Student 1: I guess he wants to show what really happened.
Teacher: OK, but let’s look at the last part of the story. What could be his real
motive for speaking up and defending himself?

4. Redirect. When a student responds to a question, the teacher can ask another student to
comment on his statement. One purpose of using this technique is to enable more students to
participate. This strategy can also be used to allow a student to correct another student's
incorrect statement or respond to another student's question.

Examples:
Teacher: Joshua, do you agree with Jake’s comment?
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Teacher: From your experience, Roger, does what Carol say seem true?
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Teacher: Jaine, can you give me an example of the concept that Andrei
mentioned?

5. Rephrase. This technique is used when a student provides an incorrect response or no

response. Instead of telling the student she is incorrect or calling upon another student, the
Teacher can try one of three strategies:

Example:
Teacher: How would you characterize the wolf?
Student 1: (No response).
Teacher: Can you describe the wolf in the story?

References:

Aschner, M.J. (1961). Asking questions to trigger thinking. NEA Journal, 50, 44-46.
Bloom, Benjamin S. (ed.) (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: Cognitive domain. New York: David
McKay Company, Inc.
Bo-Linn, C. (2006). Effective classroom questioning Instructional Development. Center for Teaching
Excellence. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Retrieved at http://www.oir.uiuc.edu/
Did/docs/questioning.htm on 2 October 2006.
Carner, R.L. (1963). Levels of questioning. Education, 83, 546-550.
Day, R. & J. Park. (2005). Developing reading comprehension Questions. Reading in a foreign language. I
Volume 17, No.1
Lewis, K. (2002). Developing questioning skills. Center for Teaching Effectiveness. University of Texas at Austin
Pate, R.T. & Bremer, N.H. (1967). Guided learning through skillful questioning. Elementary School Journal, 67,
417-422.
Pearson, P.D. & Johnson, D.D. (1972). Teaching reading comprehension. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Sanders, N.M. (1966). Classroom questions: What kinds? New York: Harper and Row.
Wolf, D., et al. The art of questioning. Talk delivered at the Summer Institute of the College Boards Educational
EQuality Project, held in Santa Cruz, California, July 9-13, 1986.
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