recently I’ve been spending a lot of time focusing of getting my lower level students to master questions.
It seems that many students seem reticent to ask other questions or ask me about the things they really want to know. I love it when students ask me some crazy questions – “how much money do you have?” or “what do you love about your wife?” I want them not to worry about asking as it’s my job to teach them and even if they might ask me something a little too private at times I simply teach them “it’s a secret” or “that’s private”. I make sure to explain to them when and where various questions might not work. However my students know I’m basically a straight shooter and am happy to tell them the answers to MOST of their questions. Being shy is never good when it comes to learning a language and questions allow us to break the ice, find out details when we’re confused and to build a deeper, more meaningful relationship.
Adrian
At our school, SSE Ohtsu, Chiharu and I have also been encouraging our students to ask questions. Not only do questions allow you to develop your relationships and deepen your understanding, but they are very important in the art of conversation, which is essentially what students are trying to learn. As an exercise in question building and conversation skills development, i have my students start with a “What’s your favourite_____?” question. From there, i tell students they MUST follow-up each answer with a new [related] question. At first students might find this a little tricky, but once they get the hang of it, they realize how easy it use to progress a conversation using simple questions as follow up to answers. Try it!
Edward, SSE Ohtsu
Great article and great comment. I am very happy to see this importance being placed on the use of questions. To me when coaching communicative confidence with the Japanese it is the use of the question that has always taken priority. When it comes to SSE students I feel it the orange level that will make or break. The Pinks are new an willing to follow, the Reds are becoming confident and like to experiment more and more, but the Oranges NEEDs to feel achievement the achievement needs to be obvious, even startling and it needs to be genuinely useful. This where questions come in again. Great work guys. Oh and bye the way, from your Smith’s training what is the overriding priority objective for the Orange course? Been a while? Grab your manuals, it starts like this, “To be able to use…..”