So what CCQs do is they enable the teacher, and perhaps the student, to confirm that understanding has taken place.
I hear you say, what’s wrong with asking students if they have understood?
Well, think about what we do when somebody explains something complicated to us. We often nod thoughtfully, add comments such as ‘I see’ or ‘That’s interesting’ to make the speaker feel good about themselves. We don’t want to tell them that they are making no sense whatsoever. Also, we might not want to appear to be a bit slow on the uptake and often fake understanding to save face. Go on, admit it! You’ve done that haven’t you? You might even be faking understanding right now as you’re reading this blog post.
To ensure, as much as possible, that our students have understood our definition or explanation, we can ask them CCQs.
Let’s imagine that you’ve defined the word ‘banana’ to your student – naturally, you would only do this were you not able to magically produce a banana out of thin air or draw a recognisable banana on the whiteboard. You may have talked about fruits, shapes, peel, favourite food of chimpanzees etc.
But, how do you know the student has understood?
You could try asking them directly if they had understood but they may lie to save face or say they had understood but you’ve only got their word for that. They may have completely misunderstood the meaning of banana and confused it with an apple.
You could interpret their body language and facial expressions. Might work but I remember teaching three young guys from Sri Lanka who spent the whole lesson shaking their heads. I was devastated and assumed they would go straight to my boss and complain about their dreadful teacher. A fellow teacher sympathised with my plight and cheered me up no end when he informed me that Sri Lankans shake their heads to register agreement and understanding.
Anyway, I digress. Back to CCQs.
A CCQ is a question we ask the student to ensure they had understood our definition or explanation.
If I have just taught the word ‘banana’, I can ask the student the following questions:
Is a banana red? (If he says ‘yes’, he hasn’t understood)
Are bananas hard or soft? (If he says ‘soft’, I can assume he hasn’t confused a banana with a stick)
Are bananas eaten by monkeys or tigers? (Do tigers eat bananas? I hope not)
If the student answers the questions correctly, we can assume that they are not completely confused by my banana definition.
Should CCQ’s be just questions?
Although they are called questions, they don’t have to be. They can be true and false statements, they can be incomplete sentences, they can be questions with a binary choice to help learners or they can be non-verbal ways of checking – in fact, teachers can use any and all the methods they use for the presentation vocabulary or grammar in order to check its understanding, and this includes
- pictures (Which one shows the word?),
- time lines (Which time line fits this sentence?),
- physical activity like miming or demonstrating,
- opposites,
- synonyms,
- definitions,
- examples,
- explanations,
- and even asking for a translation in the mother tongue or
- asking the learners to say which translation is the most appropriate.
Should CCQ’s be used just for concepts in grammar and vocabulary?
Lack of understanding may involve all the parameters of what knowing a word, phrase, or pattern entails, and this includes form, meaning, function, tenor, pronunciation, collocation, syntax, spelling, word field etc.
And how do we create good CCQ’s?
Usually, the best approach is to follow these three simple steps:
- Think of the underlying propositions
- List these propositions
- Turn the propositions into a series of simple questions
By underlying propositions, I mean the concepts or notions within words, phrases, sentence patterns
An example of a lexical item
thumb
- one of the fingers
- part of the hand
- not part of a foot
An example of a pattern
You should have told me!
- you didn’t tell me
- I am angry
- it was your job to tell me
- now it’s too late
- I missed something because of this
- I am protesting
- I am being critical
- My intonation shows I am upset
- we are friends
- we are peers
- I can talk to you like this
Good concept questions are not easy to write – they require a depth of analytical as well as intuitive understanding of what we are trying to check and not just what the grammar book says. Some of you may even have spotted the links to componential analysis which good CCQ design entails.
And finally, good concept questions, especially for patterns of language, should never include the pattern we are trying to check!!!
Can you think why?
In a further post, I would like to include some more ways of checking learning and understanding.
