Clarifying Questions: Social and Academic Understanding

Asking clarifying questions, examples, how to teach

Benefits of Teaching Them!

Asking questions is considered an important academic and listening skill. We teach students to ask them to seek clarity and understanding of academic content. In speech therapy, we also teach them as a way of compensating for difficulties with auditory processing. Asking clarifying questions also helps in social situations, when we seek understanding of the perspective of our communication partners. As a Speech Language Pathologist, these are the learning outcomes I address when teaching clarifying questions.

Process of Teaching Clarifying Questions

Asking an efficient question requires a certain amount of meta-cognition and self-awareness of your own learning needs. To ask a solid clarifying question, we’ve got to understand what typically helps us understand complex information bettter:

do I need examples?
do I need them to repeat what was said?
would a picture help?

It’s also helpful to know what part of the content is confusing to us.

is it the vocabulary?
the steps?
the directions?

Then, provide examples and teach the steps as outlined below.

Formal and Informal Questions

Once you’ve taught the concept of asking clarifying questions and how to use them, be sure to cover how they are different in formal and informal situations. If used incorrectly, they can sound like one is challenging or contradicting the speaker and can further compound a communication breakdown.

I like to start with having students tell me why different responses do NOT work in formal situations. If you haven’t taught students about formal and informal communication, check out this blog post!

See the example below from my BOOM cards on teaching clarifying questions.

Questions DON’T Make Them Look Foolish!

Some students think that asking any question makes them look “silly.” When this is the case, address it! Teens can be so caught up in their self-image that they might not realize that most teachers and communication partners think asking questions is the sign of an engaged and attentive listener!