The most striking statement in the text says that making a question is not about what a question should look like, but about its power in context.
To narrow this down, I don’t think we are really aware, first of all, about the power of words, so let alone questions’. We might first analyse our own vocabulary, as we saw within the revision of our own educational laws, that concepts are not clearly stated. Most of the time, they’re too vast and vague allowing the reader to give them whatever interpretation you may think of. From this basis, we don’t even have clear our “master commandments”.
This is just an analogy to illustrate how difficult it is to settle our initial key concepts. Then, moving towards questions, as the text constantly reminds us, designing questions is a high order skill, an “art”. From this basic step concerning words, the series of suggestions and steps make the process even more complex.
It’s neither surprising then that we are not good at making proper overarching questions, nor do we wonder about being meagre critical thinkers. We must give students work that enables them to have an “aha!” Certainly we can do that, yet to give them a truly and genuine “aha!” it’s such a big task that not many teachers know how carry out.
At this point there’s another concept that I myself have not very clear, that of ‘context’. To achieve this question power, we are meant to control this context, whatever it means. Within the text, the idea of “context of use” appears in our EFL case as a fiction instance, totally opposed to the one an ESL subject may deal with.
As far as I understand, context comes into sight when developing skills, when you are meant to set into action your understanding. Nevertheless, is this a real context? I think it is not as the situations you could get being an ESL subject, and unfortunately, these cannot be reinforced outside the classroom (refering to language learning) So, are we really making good use of this “context” and all the powerful words that allow us to produce powerful questions with their consequent learning?
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8 comments:
Good question dear Claudio.....
Real, real context is something that unfortunately we will never have in a non-english speaking country, I think....Therefore, our task is to create something as close as possible to a real context always having in mind that maybe for a bieg number of our students, the classroom is the only instance when they hear and practice english.
It sounds easy, but of course it is not,essential questions can be of great help at least to reproduce that aha! you mention.
They are aimed at producing the same amazement, anger, sadness, happiness ,etc, a good question would cause them in a " real" context.
But if I ask one of my students an essential question, unless I'm the greatest of fakes, I AM setting a real context , right?
Real and artificial contexts then became two overlapping realities.
Hope you get my point !
Thank you!
Vicky
How can we expect our students to be prepared to answer essential questions when they are not asked to do so? How can teachers ask essential questions when they have not been trained to do so?
New trends point out the importance of critical thinking. It is our responsibility to lead our students towards that; however, I always think I was never taught to be a critical teacher at university. Now, at the M.A., the whole world turns around this idea. As I have not been trained to be critical (not until now, at least) I probably lack the ability to ask essential questions. Then how can I expect my students to answer and ask them? And this is just one case; my case. Thank God I am aware about this now... What about those so called teachers who have problems when doing a simple teacher task such as planning a lesson? It is quite a nightmare. Now imagine how difficult it would be for them (and for me) to prepare a good set of essential questions... It would be even more difficult than planning a lesson. It would take them hours.
So, I think, in our country we must go step by step. First, we need well-trained teachers. Second, they need to be continuously evaluated, and then, just then... When we realize we have brave teachers; who do not fear evaluations, who do not have problems in planning a lesson... We will in conditions to demand essential questions and students being able to answer them... By the way, did you know teachers from state schools do not want to be evaluated any longer? We are not on the right track!
Bye, neighbour...
Hi Clau Dio!
I liked what you commented about the power of words. As language teachers we are aware that words do ahve power; the power to encourage and to discourage, to praise, to critizise, to bias, to trigger imagination. However, making and asking essential questions becomes a skill of a higher lever. It is not just a matter of wording and putting a question mark at the end. It goes beyond that. Selecting the appropiate words to ask questions that will be thought challenging is a task that involves careful planning, time ( a precious thing these days) and evaluation for further action.
Hi Claudio!
I certainly agree with you on "the power of words", since they represent what we intend to communicate. What if what we want to say it is not quite what it is read?
A vague piece of information may lead the student as far as his/her imagination allows him/her. Therefore, we must be extremely cautious on how our students receive the information we want them to. Are they going to know what we are asking them?
The problem is that we are not really aware about the power that words have as you state in your comments. The term understanding is taken and used in an inadequate way, mostly by teachers. This can be appreciated through the results that Chilean students are obtaining at the end of the process, along with the development of their capacities of transfer, inquiry and application. However how we can achieve that, if we are not able to give a real context to our questions. This flaw does not allow that the information given be meaningful by the students, because they can not perceive what is the real use that it has. Obviously this is something that we must to take in account if we want to point to a qualitative education.
My dear,
Unfortunately, being EFL... context is something that will never be favourable for us, considering language learning.
However, it is a cojoined task (teachers and students) to create this fictional and somehow continuous 'language environment' to have our children believe and live what we expect. How? That is something both teachers and students have to agree on something meaningful and that remains on time. The latter has to go further than the visual aspect which is usually lost or remains out of our sight.
On the oter hand, as you put forward, power of words make a big difference. Making essential questions that might be correctly addressed need special training for teachers. If we teachers are not able to ask one, how do we expect our students to propose one, or we to recognise one?
Dear Claudio,
As you state, being able to elaborate good overarching questions can be pretty demanding for teachers. Nevertheless, it is an intellectual exercise we must put into practice, and it can certainly be perfected.
One way to achieve this is by planning our lessons long before they do start. When I mean planning I do not refer only to the general syllabus but also to each individual lesson. When going over a lesson you have to deal with context. If you can predict that your students will not be able to understand the context associated to the essential questions, you might use some visual aid to faciliate the succesful association. If not, you might need some other set or related questions. Just in case our students do not seem to comprehend or respond succesfully.
Obviously, Once you are able to produce the magical and powerful words to awake immediate curiosity and interest in students, the aim of making our students critical thinkers could be easily reachable. But how many of us can truly do this? Few, I guess. But we have to train ourselves and take a chance on essential questions. Little by little, they will reach our students and will be easily contextualized.
Definitely an interesting poit of view yours. I mean regarding context, how many different contexts get together in a classroom?, how many students do we work with every day?, how much time do we have to think in that useful possibility which would be use their contexts to enagage them in real learning ,dont know, the time is over and I cant write anymore.
see you.
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