A number of specific activities should be designed to systematically teach each skill.

Merely placing students in a group does little to help teach group skills.

Providing time to ask questions does not teach students how to specifically ask questions. If the instructor desires to teach students to ask questions in order to obtain desired information a worksheet or tape could be designed to help analyze possible questions.

Sample Exercise

Desired Information: Things South African government did in history to provide opportunities for nonwhites.

Possible questions

No 1. Why didn't the government provide equal opportunities?

Yes 2. What had been done by the government to provide opportunities for nonwhites?

No 3. Why were capable people deprived of opportunities?

No 4. What the government had done.

The last item is typical of what some class members do in a question asking session. A statement is made which is not really a question. The individual tries to depend on the teacher or someone else to make it into a question.

Have students choose the best question from the above list and also write questions of their own which would produce the desired information.

Students could learn to identify questions by their type. This could be done on a worksheet. List the questions and provide a code for their categorization. (Types -- Embedded, indirect, open-ended, rhetorical, etc.)

A tape could be made with various voices asking one question. Various tones of voice could be used such as whining, weak, interested, garbled, aggressive, loud, or soft. Students could discuss their reactions to tones of voice and speech patterns which antagonize, seem to pry and probe, those which encourage and support, those which sound overly dramatic or "gushy? and those which sound normal, real, and honest.