120 hr. TEFL Course Module 5-Speaking (Pt.11 Responding to Questions)

Module 5: Speaking

5.3 Responding to questions

 As with many topics within this course, responding to questions is not compartmentalized to speaking, meaning it is something that can help students gain fluency in a number of different ways, not just one. There are a couple of different ways that we can look at this topic, and each one works on a different skill that will help build your students’ English fluency.

5.3.1    Question and response

Here are the different ways that you can question your students and expect them to respond:

Read a question and write a response: This is one of the more typical ways that teachers assess a student’s reading because it is easy to assess after the fact and requires each student to do his or her own work. This strategy helps your students work on reading and writing skills but does very little to build their speaking skills.

Listen to a question and write a response: This strategy is more rare because it requires every student to work at the same pace, which is not always feasible in a classroom. We will talk about such strategies in the next module when we discuss listening in much more detail. Just like the previous strategy, this strategy does not do much to help students learn to speak English more fluently. 

Read a question and answer verbally: This strategy helps students improve both their reading and speaking ability. It is a great strategy to use when students are just starting off trying to speak English on their own because the question is written in front of them and always available for reference. This is a great first step towards speaking English without any visual cues.

Listen to a question and answer verbally: This is the ultimate test of a student’s fluency. Not only do they have to comprehend the question as they hear it (something we will discuss in the next module on listening), but they also have to be able to formulate a cogent response in English. If your students are able to accomplish this task, then they are well on their way to English fluency.