Moving Beyond “Where he is?” and “What she did?”

Here is an interesting article published by Shelly Hedstrom on the Cambridge blog.

If you have students who have settled into predictable mistakes with question-formation, Shelly Hedstrom has a grammar tip for you. Students need to ask questions often, so we should provide plenty of opportunities for them to practice well-formed questions.

Students Need Extra Practice with Questions!

One of the last areas students seem to “master” in English is question-formation. We tend to teach questions at a lower level and be done with it. However, given the complexities of question-formation (word order, auxiliary choice, verb tense), language transfer issues, and input from other non-native speakers, compounded with how frequently students need to ask questions, I believe questions should be re-taught at all levels.

Meaningful Questions

To give my students practice with meaningful questions and to help build community in my classes, I have my students give impromptu mini-presentations about themselves (it’s amazing what they learn about each other!). During the presentation, the audience take notes (to write a composition about their classmate) and practices questions.

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