Asking Effective Questions

A good question is both answerable and challenging, inspiring analysis, synthesis, interpretation, and critical thinking. Questions on a passage should encourage students to articulate and uncover new meaning in the material. You don’t need to have a specific answer in mind for the question you ask, but you should think in advance about the kinds of answers your question may elicit.

TYPES OF QUESTIONS

Here are some types of questions that tend to facilitate thoughtful, sustained discussions: (Note: the sample questions are taken from a French Literature class! Please feel free to design your own sample questions appropriate to your discipline for your students.)

Analysis

Questions beginning with “Why…” “How would you explain…” “What is the importance of…” “What is the meaning of”

EXAMPLE: WHAT IS THE MEANING OF MADAME X’S COMMENT ABOUT JACQUE’S ACTIVITIES THE WEEK BEFORE THEIR ENCOUNTER AT THE OPERA?

Compare and Contrast

“Compare…” “Contrast…” “What is the difference between…” “What is the similarity between…”

EXAMPLE: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE MOTHER AND THE FATHER’S ATTITUDES TOWARD THE DAUGHTER’S RELATIONSHIP WITH PHILIPPE?

Cause and Effect

“What are the causes/results of…” “What connection is there between…”

EXAMPLE: WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF LEA’S DISTRESS WHEN SHE LOOKS AT HERSELF IN THE MIRROR?

Clarification

“What is meant by…” “Explain how…”

PITFALLS

Here are some types of questions that you’ll want to avoid and that can lead to dead ends in discussions:

Simple Yes-No

“Is the Aunt expressing a desire for Gigi to marry?”

Produces little discussion and encourages guessing.

Elliptical

“What about the aunt’s sexual history?” “Well, what do you think about the Don Juan’s values?”

Too vague; it is not clear what is being asked.

Leading

“Don’t you think that Colette is condemning the Don Juan figure for his lack of caring?”

Conveys the expected answer.

Slanted

“Why are Colette’s young women so corrupt?”

Seven Ways to Handle Nervousness

1. Practice: Practice doesn’t make perfect, but doing a presentation out loud several times before the real thing will make you feel more confident, especially if you practice under conditions as close to the actual situation as possible. Do at least one dry run in front of an audience, even if the audience is just a friend.
2. Concentrate on the Ideas: Concentrate on the ideas you want to get across, not on your own nervousness. Even shy people speak up when it’s something they care about. Think about your audience’s needs, not your own.
3. Make a Strong Start: You’ll be most nervous at the beginning of the talk, so start with an introduction that will be easy to remember and that will relax you as well as the audience.
4. Visualize: Rehearse for your first presentation by actually visualizing how it will go. Imagine what you’d like to say, how you’d like to say it, and a positive response from the audience. Many athletes use a similar approach by imagining an entire dive or jump, in detail, before they actually do it.
5. Use Audiovisual Aids or Multimedia: Particularly if you have lots of technical information to cover, it can be reassuring to have much of it already written on transparencies or PowerPoint slides. Even just an outline on the board can reassure you that you won’t forget what you want to say. Be sure to look at your audience as much as possible, however, and not at your outline or PowerPoint slides.
   
6. Assume a Confident Attitude: To a large extent, you can control your own reaction to sweaty palms or a beating heart. Tell yourself you’re “psyched,” not nervous. Remember that to an audience, nervousness can seem like dynamism or energy. Your attitude will probably determine what the audience thinks.
7. Breathe: Right before your presentation, take a few moments to regulate and deepen your breathing.When it comes to public speaking, your breath is your main support. The moment you start to feel a case of nerves building up, take a deep breath. You will start to feel better immediately and your voice will convey your relaxation and confidence.

10 Reasons Why It's Okay To Fail Sometimes

When things aren't going your way, all you have to do is look at the bright side.

There are times when we ask ourselves: Why is life so unfair? We work hard continuously, yet things never go our way. At very early ages, we have been taught that it's never good to fail, which is why we always beat ourselves up for it. Life has its way of biting us in the butt and it leaves us thinking that it is never going to let go, until we realize that there was actually something better for us—something that makes failure worth going through. Here are some of those lessons that will help you realize that it is indeed okay to fail sometimes.

 1  We all fail at times.

Failure is inevitable, we can't control it! As J.K. Rowling once said, "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default." With how great power comes great responsibility, life comes with failure. At the end of the day, it's all about how you're going to handle it.

2  It reveals your weaknesses.

When you have a better idea of your weaknesses, you will be able to learn how to convert them into strengths. As failure reveals your weaknesses, it helps you become stronger as well.

 3  Failure makes you stronger.

After you've failed once, twice, or countless of times, you won't be so afraid of it anymore. Fear is your biggest enemy because it will keep you from going beyond what you think you can actually do. Remember, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger!

4  Failure gives you experience.

We all know that not everything is going to work the way we want them to. In order to get better, you have to open yourself; be willing to explore more horizons. That makes valuable experience—experience that can be used as room for improvement. When you've had a taste of something better, you'll learn how to move on and find something more fulfilling.

5  You take more chances.

The best way to guarantee that we won't fail is to not try, but isn't that a failure on its own? Some may give up after a few tries but that just means that they have given up on their ambitions and goals as well. You have to use that motivation to push yourself to take more chances and learn new things. It's time to quit playing it safe and start taking more risks!

 6  You learn from it.

Failure can be the teacher you'll learn from the most. It's safe to say that you may actually learn so much more from failure than you will from success. When you've figured out all the things you do incorrectly, you'll learn what you need improvement on.

 7  Failure helps your improve.

There is always room for improvement no matter how great you are at something. After you've failed, just learn how to bounce right back up and push yourself to become ten times better than you were before.

 8  Failure helps you discover new paths.

If one solution doesn't help you get what you want and where you want to be, doesn't mean that you should stop there. You just have to keep trying and trying until you find that perfect answer to the question you've continuously asked yourself. You might even be surprised with how easy you'll be able to solve your problem just by allowing yourself to fail.

 9  Failure will help you discover who you really are.

You will never realize all of your strengths and weaknesses in an instant, those will come while you're on your path to self-discovery. Through failure, we become better versions of ourselves because we learn how to build character and become the person that we wish to be.

 10  It helps you appreciate success more.

What's better than achieving success is knowing that you've worked hard for it. If you've faced a number of challenges and failure along the way, you will realize that all the hard work you've put into achieving the task will mean nothing compared to the feeling you'll get when you've accomplished what you had to do.

Knowledge is Power!!!

Most of us have heard the phrase “knowledge is power” — but we may not fully understand how to translate this into improving our lives in a practical way. Here is a little breakdown:

Knowledge = Options = Power

When we educate ourselves, we learn new things that we were previously unaware of. This gives us the ability to make better decisions, come up with more evolved and intelligent thoughts, improve the lives of ourselves and those around us, and thus makes us more valuable people overall.

This, in turn, leads to more options. The more valuable of a person you are, the more people will want to be around you, the more they will want to work with you, the more they introduce you to others who need your help or can help you, and the more doors and opportunities open in your life.

This high level of options in life gives you the freedom to choose from many different paths, and so you do not necessarily need anyone or anything to be happy or successful. And that freedom, my friend, is power. Because that freedom allows you to have the power to speak your mind, the power to be who you truly are, the power to not accept second class behavior from anyone, and the power to do whatever makes you happy. That is why knowledge is so important.

If you read a book written by a genius in an area you are passionate about, you will absorb so many things that have the potential to dramatically improve you life. The best part about knowledge is that unlike fancy toys, or stocks, or money, knowledge becomes part of who you are. Your car can break down at any moment. The stocks you own can plummet at any time. Hyperinflation can render all of your money useless within the blink of an eye (if you don’t believe this is possible, do some research and give yourself some knowledge about what happened in prosperous nations such as Germany and Russia during the course of history; no one is fully immune).

But no matter what happens in your life, knowledge is something that nobody can ever take away from you. Once you learn a new and revolutionary idea that transforms the way you view the world, it is yours forever. And the more you learn, the more insights you can build on top of the things you already know, until one day, you 

Top 10 Reasons Why Mostly of The Students Hate Mathematics

As teachers, we all know that students love hating Maths.

Students wear the ‘I’m no good at Maths’ badge proudly.  It’s cooler to fail at Maths than to be a ‘nerd’ and excel.  Rather than a stigma, belonging to the ‘I don’t get it’ club has more social currency than mathematical success.  And even though so much of our lives utilize Maths and mathematical thinking skills, students still parrot the line “It’s not as though I’m ever going to use this in the real world.”

“Maths was my worst subject”

So what are the ‘X’ factors which give Maths such a negative image?

In order to understand how to teach Maths like you love it, we have to understand how students hate Maths when they learn it.

Top Ten Reasons Why Students Hate Maths.
1. Teacher Assumption – “The teacher taught us as if we knew stuff already.”

2. Obscure Vocabulary – “I could never remember all of the maths words.”
3. Curricular Isolation – “Who cares? We’re never gonna use this stuff in the real world anyway.”
4. Sum Anxiety – “I kept on getting it wrong so I just gave up.”
5. Incomplete Instruction – “The teacher didn’t explain it to me properly.”
6. Social Stigma and Isolation – “I couldn’t keep up with everyone else and I didn’t want to look dumb by asking a question.”
7. Drill Overkill – “We just do the same questions over and over again.”
8. Student Self-Expectation – “I’ve never been good at Maths.  I guess I just don’t have a Maths brain.”
9. Student-Teacher Relationship – “My Maths teacher made me hate Maths.”
10. Lack of Stimulation – “Maths is just boring.”

As teachers we know that students often look for someone else to blame – so the fact that students highlight the teacher as the perceived cause of failure in Maths comes as no surprise.  But because students so often see the teacher as the ‘cause’, the teacher has the unique position of also being able to be the ‘cure’.

By addressing each of these reasons, I’m not suggesting that your students will suddenly begin to love Maths – but I can guarantee that their perceptions about Maths will begin to change.  And as their appreciation of your Maths classes improves, you’ll begin to find yourself looking forward to seeing what the next class will uncover.