2025-06-27
6 分钟Questions.
Questions are a big part of language learning, certainly a big part of language instruction.
Today I want to talk about how I use questions and what I consider to be the role of questions in language learning.
Essentially, I see questions not as a way of training my recall,
my ability to recall vocabulary or grammar rules.
Rather, I see questions as a way to trigger more exposure to different forms of the language,
different grammatical forms, different patterns.
And I see questions as a way to trigger me as a learner to speak,
to trigger my output in the language.
And I'm going to explain that.
I have always been a fan, from when I was learning Portuguese,
of the great and late Brazilian educator Rubem Alves, who said,
nothing destroys the pleasure of reading, which is essentially a vagabond experience,
and I'm going from memory here, as much as being asked questions about what we have read.
So I believe that the more we read, the more we listen.
the more we engage with the language, the better we will learn.
And therefore, we have to make that experience as pleasurable as possible.
So, if we are not inclined to answer questions,
if we don't want to be forced to remember or to analyze the grammar in something we have just read,
then we should not be forced to do questions.