The document discusses different types of questions teachers can ask students, including yes/no, either/or, and WH questions, and provides examples. It also covers strategies for eliciting short and long answers and different methods for organizing question-answer work in the classroom, noting that strategy B of pausing for students to think before choosing one to answer is generally most effective.

1. By Mr. Muhammad Aslam
FIC Kohat

2. OBJECTIVES
 To make the teachers aware of
the basic question types and to
show how they can be used for
different purposes.
 To show teachers how to elicit
short and long answers from the
students in a natural way.
 To make teachers aware of
different possible strategies for
asking questions.

3. WHY TEACHERS ASK
QUESTIONS?
 To check that students understand or to check their
comprehension.
 To give students practice.
 To find out what students really think or know. We
can encourage them to talk about their experiences
and feelings.
 To get feed back about students’ performance and
teacher’s own performance.
 To check their prior knowledge.
 To make them attentive and alert.
 To elicit new knowledge.
 To make them guess or predict new information.

4. QUESTION TYPES
Look at the following questions.
II) Do you like tea?
III) Can you swim?
IV) Are you enjoying this lesson?
V) Do you prefer tea or coffee?
VI) Will you go by bus or train?
VII) What do you study at home?
VIII) Why are you interested in Math?
IX) Feeling good?

5. 1.Yes/No Questions
 Look at the first group of
questions:
 Do you live in Kohat?
 What can be their answer?
 Their answer is mostly ‘Yes’ or
‘No’ or with short form: ‘yes, I
do’., ‘No, I don’t’.

6. How to make and use Yes/No
questions?
 By using helping verbs/auxiliaries at
the beginning we can form such
questions.
 Yes/No questions are used for:
i) checking comprehension
ii) easy responses.
iii) because students don’t require
new language.
iv) to check knowledge level
questions.

7. 2. ‘OR’ Questions
 Look at the following questions:
 i) Do you like ice-cream or
chocolate?
 ii) Would you prefer English or
history?
 They are ‘OR’ questions or
‘alternative questions'. The reply to
such questions is normally in one
word or phrase from the question
itself.

8. How to frame and use ‘OR’
questions?
 They are framed just like
Yes/No questions.
 Their use is also like Yes/No
questions. They require limited
response.
 They are used to check
knowledge level questions.

9. ‘WH’ QUESTIONS
 Look at the following questions:
 What is your program today?
 Why do you prefer coffee over tea?
 They are also called information
questions.
 With most of the WH questions, it is
natural to give a short answer. e.g.:
Where do you live? In Kohat.

10. How to form and use ‘WH’
questions?
 Some WH word is used at the
beginning of the sentence and
followed by helping verb.
 ‘Who’ or ‘What’ questions some
times have the same structure as a
normal sentence. They are called
subject questions because they ask
about the subject of the sentence.
e.g. What happened? Who wrote this
letter? Etc.

11. Eliciting Long Answers
 ‘WH’ questions are used to elicit long
answers for the purpose of practicing
language structure.
 They should be asked in such a
manner so that the long response
look natural not a forced one like the
following:
 What do you eat in dinner? Give full
answer.
 ‘Question prompt’ can be used for
long answer. E.g. Tell me about your
day? What about lunch? Etc.

12. QUESTIONING STRATEGIES
 Apart from question types a
teacher should know how to
organize question/answer work
in the class.
 There are different ways of
asking questions.

13. Asking Questions
Questions can be asked in following
ways:
 Teacher can ask each student turn
by turn.
 He can let any student call out the
answer.
 He can choose a student to answer.
 He can get the class to answer in
chorus. And So on.

14. Common Questioning
Strategies
 There are four strategies commonly used by the
teachers:
A. Teacher asks question and simply lets the
students call out answers in chorus.
B. Teacher asks a question then pauses to give the
whole class a chance to think. Then he chooses
one student to answer. No one is allowed to call
out the answer or raise his hands.
C. Teacher first chooses a student then asks
question.
D. Teacher asks a question and lets students raise
their hands. Then he chooses one student with
raised hand to answer.

15. Which one is the best strategy
and why?
 Which one can help to do the
following:
B. Help the teacher to control the
class.
C. To keep the attention of the whole
class.
D. Give good students a chance to
show their knowledge.
E. Give weak students a chance to
answer. Give lazy students a
chance not to answer.

16. Advantages of these
strategies
 There is single best strategy A which
suits large classes. It can be effective
for short answers.
 Strategy B keeps the class involved but
still under control. It gives chance to
weaker as well as able students to
answer. It is a good strategy for routine
easy questions.
 Strategy C is highly controlled but is not
a good way of keeping attention of the
class.
 Strategy D encourages bright students
to answer and weaker ones tend to
remain silent.

17. A Reminder
 All the strategies and
techniques are weapons in the
hands of a teacher. It is up to
him which one to use , when to
use and how to use.