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Writing your own questions
Some ideas to inspire you to write more of your own
questions in your lessons.
Gap questions
..simple, but
effective..
Aim: To provide a simple, but effective way for
students to further work with a text.
When to use: After reading
Procedure:
1. Prepare 5-8 statements with information taken
from the text students have read. In each
statement leave one or two gaps.
2. Ask students to work in pairs with closed books
and try to fill in the gaps
3. When they finish, ask them to swap their answers
with another pair and to peer correct by looking
again at the text.
Flow chart
Aim/rationale: This allows students to interact with a
text in a more diagrammatic way which is, for many
students, easier to do than purely through questions
and answers.
When to use: During reading/listening
Procedure:
1. Prepare boxes as below with suitable categories. In
the example below, the students have to write in what
Marie Curie did in each of the following years (Unit 3, Tieng Anh 10, Reading)
1867 -> 1891 -> 1894 -> 1903
2. Get feedback from the students.
Comment: These are very easy to make. So become
the author of your own questions!
About questions
a. As teachers we use questions all the time in our lessons often without thinking.
b. There are many different types of question, each with different advantages and disadvantages.
c. Using a variety of question types is interesting, motivating and effective in helping our students to learn better.
d. It is easy to make our own questions to use in our lessons and to adapt them to our students’ level and interests.
Questions to answers
Aim/rationale: To avoid doing questions the same
way all the time and to put the focus on question
forms.
When to use: After reading/listening
Procedure:
1. Give students 5 statements/answers relating to
the text they have read/listened.
2. Ask them to work in pairs to write the questions
for the answers
3. Feedback to the whole class
Tip: If students are low level, you can provide
prompts (part of the questions) to help them
The aim of the text/listening
Aim: To give the students a reason to read a text.These kinds
of questions encourage the students to think critically about a text
When to use: before/during reading/listening
Procedure:
1. Prepare 4 – 5 possible aims of the text/listening and
write them on the board (or dictate them)
2. Ask students to read/listen and then to choose which
option they think is correct
For example:
a) to entertain
b) to persuade
The aim of the text is to: c) to inform/educate
d) to get the reader to think
e) to warn
Students write the questions
Aim: To provide students with the chance to interact
with the text in a student–centered way.
When to use: After reading/listening
Procedure:
1. Get the students in small groups or pairs to write 5
questions about the text they have read/listened to.
2. Elicit one question on the board, so that the
participants are clear what they have to do.
3. Give a time limit of 5 - 10 minutes to write the questions.
4. Ask the groups to exchange their questions with
another group and to find the answers.
Tips: If the students are low level provide some prompts
to help them e.g. question words (or more). Monitor the
students’ questions and note down any errors they
make. Write these on the board and get the students to
correct them. Lastly, get a few of the students to read
out their questions for the whole class. Answer them
together and correct any mistakes.
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