The document discusses the importance of questioning as a key component of effective teaching, emphasizing the need for high-quality questions that motivate and engage students. It outlines various types of questions, techniques for effective questioning, and the impact of questioning on student learning and classroom dynamics. The author stresses that mastery of questioning techniques is essential for teachers to enhance learning outcomes and foster a positive classroom environment.

1. 1
By:
Dr.G.R.Angadi
Asst. Professor & Research Guide,
BLDEA’s JSS College of Education, P.G. Studies & Research Centre in
Education, Bijapur-586101 Karnataka (India)
Email-ID: gavimahi@gmail.com
URL: http//sites.google.com/site/drgrangadi
The Art of Questioning
An Essential Skill for Successful Teaching.

3.  The analytical concept of teaching considers
teaching as a complex skill comprising various
component teaching skills.
 Component of teaching skills are a set of
interrelated component teaching behaviors for
the achievement of specified instructional
objectives.

4. • The research experts in this field haveThe research experts in this field have
identified a number of component-teachingidentified a number of component-teaching
skills. Among them, skill in questioningskills. Among them, skill in questioning
represents an important component.represents an important component.
The art of questioning is the most potent weapon in
the educational armory of the teacher. During a
lesson, the teacher will have to ask different types of
questions, depending on the situation and purpose to
be achieved.

5. The aim of questioning is:
◦ To motivate students,
◦ To create interest,
◦ To test what the student knows
◦ To encourage
◦ To stimulate thinking
◦ To clear ambiguities and doubts.
 Questioning can achieve its purposes if the questions are of
high quality.
 Quality, rather than quantity of questions make the teaching
effective.
 Questioning helps the teacher to understand how far the
teaching has been helpful to the students.

6.  Good questions by their very nature are educative,
and they have a very prominent place in all kinds of
learning.
 The judicious use of questions can be the basis for
valuable instructional experiences.

7.  Aggarwal (1995): ‘Questions properly planned,
carefully worded, evenly distributed, scientifically
asked, honestly answered and intelligently followed
up are very profitable and in fact indispensable in
the effective teaching-learning process’.

8. Levin and Nolan (2000): ‘The use of good
questioning techniques is a potent
means of keeping students actively
involved in lessons and thereby
minimizing disruptive behavior’
 Formation of good question is not an easy task, which can
be mastered through conscious and repeated efforts.
 The efficiency of instruction is measured to a certain
extent by the nature of questions that are asked and the
care with which they are framed.
 One who questions faultlessly and a good style of
questioning or mastery of questioning is the art that every
teacher should aspire for.

9. The overall Questioning Techniques:
 State the question clearly and precisely:
* It should not be ambiguous, lengthy,
encourage guesswork and vague.
* It should be direct, straightforward and
understandable.
* Language should be simple
* It should be relevant to the topic

10. Pause after asking the questions:
 Address to the entire class.
 Pause before calling on someone.
 To understand and think.
 To formulate the answer.
 Chance to think all students.
 It helps to formulate original responses.
 The length of students responses increased.
 Failures to respond decreased.
 Confidence increased.
 Speculative thinking increased
 Student to student comparing increased.
 Higher level thinking responses increased.

11. Teacher Question
PAUSE
(wait time)
3-5 sec.
Student Response
PAUSE
3-5 sec
Teacher Reaction
Pause after asking the questions:

12. Call on students at random:
* Desirable to think all students
* Call on volunteers
* Call on Non-volunteers

13. After a student answers a question,
wait three to five seconds before
you respond:
* Silence/ waiting time tends to increase number of
students
* Increases quality and amount of answer
* It increases student-student interaction
* It increases the diversity of student answers

14. Ask questions at a variety of cognitive
levels:
* Proceeds from knowledge and comprehension to
application
* Analysis
* Synthesis
* Evaluation promotes both critical thinking and better
retention of basic information

15. Distribute questions to a range of
students:
* It is better to distribute questions to all students
* On the basis of their IQ’s

16. Ask follow up or probing questionsAsk follow up or probing questions
to extend student thinking afterto extend student thinking after
correct and incorrect responses:correct and incorrect responses:
* Ask Question for clarification
* Ask Question for specific examples
* Ask for further expansion/ elaboration of an answer
* Ask students to relate their answer to previous
answers

17. * Every question should grow out of the response
of the previous one
* Question should be in a sequence/orderly

18. Provide immediate feedback toProvide immediate feedback to
students:students:
*It indicates appropriateness of the students
answers
* If the answer is not wholly correct
* Cues and hints can be used to help students
answer appropriately
* Feedback need not be long/ elaborate
* Head nodding, eye brows rising, ahh!, UR right,
yes, very good, good, excellent, wonderful
answer, etc.

19. Treat students with dignity:
* Never humiliate / embarrass a student who gives a wrong
answer
* To encourage student participation
* Treat students, as you wish to be / want to be treated.

20. Classification of Questions:
 Introductory/Motivating questions
 Developing/ Presentation Questions
 Application Questions
 Recapitulate Questions
 Evaluating/ Testing Questions

21. BasedBased on Bloom’s taxonomy of instructionalon Bloom’s taxonomy of instructional
objectives, questions classified as follows, accordingobjectives, questions classified as follows, according
to the cognitive levels of responses:to the cognitive levels of responses:
Knowledge questions
Comprehension/ understanding
questions
Application questions
Analysis questions
Synthesis questions
Evaluation questions

22. According to their essential functions
questions are classified into the following
types:
Lower order questions
Middle order questions
Higher order questions
Open-ended questions
Convergent questions
Divergent questions
Probing questions

23. Presented by:
Dr.G.R.Angad
i

24. Functions of QuestioningFunctions of Questioning
SOCIALSOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICALPSYCHOLOGICAL EDUCATIONALEDUCATIONAL
•Establish relationship
•Integrate groups
•Establish relationship
•Integrate groups
•Create healthy climate
in the classroom
•Establish suitable levels
of motivation
•Create healthy climate
in the classroom
•Establish suitable levels
of motivation
•Elicit information
•Make pupils think
•Elicit information
•Make pupils think

25. Purpose of QuestionsPurpose of Questions::
(Related to stages in the lesson plan)(Related to stages in the lesson plan)
Motivation/Introduction:
 To establish rapport
 To motivate
 To discover what the
class knows & does not
know
 To create interest
 To revise previous work
 To arouse curiosity
 To pose problems
Developing/ Presentation:
 To maintain interest and
attention
 To develop knowledge step
by step
 To lead the students
 To encourage reasoning and
logical thinking
 To find whether pupils
understand what is going on
 To clear ambiguities & doubts
 To focus attention and
important points

26. Application:
To focus and clarify
To stimulate thinking
To clear up
difficulties
To lead the pupils to
make observations
To draw inferences
for themselves
Conclusion:
•To revise the main
points of the lesson
•To test the extent of the
pupils understanding
and assimilation
•To suggest further
problems and related
issues

27. Skill of fluency in questioning
Introduction:
• You all know that questioning is an important skill that a
teacher must learn.
• One of the aspects of this skill is the ‘fluency in
questioning’.
• By fluency in questioning we mean the lots of
meaningful questions put per unit of time.
Now you may be curious to know what do we mean by
meaningful which fit in with the issues to be considered
under.

28. Skill of fluency in questioning Components

29. 1) Structure:
It includes grammatical part and content
part of the question which when taken
together convey the intent of the question
maker, various inertia for a well structured
question are.

30. 
I. Grammatical correctness:
 It is desirable for the teacher to use grammatically
correct language.
 If the language used by the teacher is wrong, it will
create confusion in the minds of pupils.
 They will spend much time in understanding the
questions.
 For each such question, the teacher and students will
take more time and thus the fluency will decrease.
 Therefore it is necessary that the teacher should be
careful while framing questions.

31. GrammaticallyGrammatically
Wrong
 When did Olympic
Games started?
 Where is kittur
channamma born?
 Who teach you English?
 Do Mohan go to Delhi?
Right
 When did Olympic
Games start?
 Where was kittur
channamma Born?
 Who teaches you
English?
 d) Does Mohan go to
Delhi?

32. II.CONCISENESS:
 It refers to the length of questions. A question is said to be
concise when it does not have redundant or extra words. A
question should be direct and straight forward.
Wrong Right
Does any one know when did India get freedom? @ When did India get freedom?
Who can tell me the name of the president of India? @ Who is the President of India?
The teacher uses many extra words like, ‘Does any one
know’, ‘Who can tell me’; these extra words not give much
meaning. Time could have been saved by framing direct
questions which are short and to the point. Therefore teacher
should ask direct questions.

33. III. Relevancy:
 An irrelevant question is that which is not related to
the topic on hand, a question is also irrelevant when
it contains terms which are not explained earlier.
(Teacher is teaching a lesson ‘Celebrations of Independent day’)
 Teacher- When do you celebrate Independence Day in your
school?
 Pupil- We celebrate Independence Day on 15th of August.
 Teacher- Who elects the President? (Irrelevant question as it
does not relate to the ‘Celebrations of Independent day)

34. Teacher wastes the time unnecessarily framing
question which are not to the point.
Therefore as a teacher you should ask the
relevant questions, so that the pupils may
answer your questions correctly and quickly.

35. IV.IV. SPEFICITYSPEFICITY ::
Well structured question is that it should be specific. A specificWell structured question is that it should be specific. A specific
question calls for clear and requires only one single response,question calls for clear and requires only one single response,
It increases the fluency in questioning.It increases the fluency in questioning.
e.g.
a) Specific questions:
1)Do you know about mountain?
1) Which is the highest mountain in the world?
2)Who discover the country?
2) Who discovered America?

36. • Here, you might have observed that the
answers to the above questions are specific
and they require only one correct response. It
increases the fluency. On the other hand, If the
teacher frames questions which are general in
nature, they will take longer time to response.

37. b) General questions:
 What do you know about the reign of king Ashok?
 Tell me something about the climate of the Tundra region?
 What were the causes of the First World War?
These Q’s are not clear , what specifically the teacher
wants to elicit from his pupils, If the pupils start responding to these
questions, it will take much of their time and questioning will not
proceed further, If the teacher want to increases the rate of or fluency
in questioning he should avoid general questions.

38. 2) PROCESS:
The word ‘Process’ implies the way of asking
questions.
a). Speed of asking questions:
The teacher should speak out questions neither too
hurriedly nor too slowly.
The teacher should give brief pause after the
question in order to enable the pupils to
understand the question.

39.  e.g.
 Teacher: How many months are there in a
year? (After a brief pause, he points to Pinky)
 Pinky: there are twelve months in a year.
 Teacher: Which is the first month of the year?
 (The teacher pauses for while)

40. b).Voice of the teacher:
It should be audible and clear to all the
pupils in the class.
The teacher should put questions in a
raised voice in order to enable the pupils
to hear the teacher even if they are sitting
on the last benches.

41. The question should be put in a pleasant tone
and in a friendly manner.
Apart from the issues discussed above,
there are certain hints which are to be kept
in mind.

42. Apart from the issues discussed above, there
are certain hints which are to be kept in mind.
i). Repetition of questions by the Teacher:
Unnecessary repetition of questions by the
teacher is an obstacle in the way of fluency for
the following reasons:
 Confuse the pupils. The pupils may not
understand what the teacher expects.
 Pupils get into the habit of attending to the
question only at the Second time.
 Much of the time is wasted in the repetition of
the questions. The pupils may, become
inattentive and may not give proper response

43. Repetition of answers given by pupils:
If the teacher generally repeats the answers of
the pupils, then the other pupils get conditioned
to listen to the teacher only. They do not listen
carefully when the earlier pupil is giving the
answers.
This results in more talk by the teacher and
less participation by the pupils. Hence, it is
hindrance in the way of increasing fluency in
questioning. Therefore, the teacher should refrain
from repetition because it merely wastes time,
encourages inattention and decreases fluency in
questioning.

44. e.g.
 Teacher: Who was called the father of nation?
 Pupil: Gandhiji was called the father of nation.
 Teacher: yes, Gandhiji was called the father of
the nation.
 Teacher: Where was he born?
 Pupil: He was born at Porbundar.
 Teacher: Yes, Gandhiji was born at Porbundar.

45. 3) PRODUCT:
The term ‘Product’ refers to the
pupils responses. Many a time it
happens that nothing is wrong with
the structure or the process of
questioning. But even then the pupils
do not give any response. Several
reasons may be given for such a
situation.

46. The pupils may not be intelligent
enough to understand the questions
put to them, or the questions may be
of higher difficulty level.
They may not be interested in the
lesson. Due to lack of interest, they
may be inattentive in the class.
They may lack in the previous
knowledge.
There may not be any rapport
between the pupil and the teacher.

47. OBSERVATION SCHEDULEOBSERVATION SCHEDULE
STRUCTURE PROCESS
Questions Grammatical
Correctness
Relevancy Conciseness Specificity Speed Voice Q.R. R.R.
1
2
3
4
5
.
.

49. EXERCISE

50. What questions can you draw out
from the image?

51. The unexamined life is not worth
–living…
The most important thing is to ask
question….