Not answering the question in extremis.
The answer to the question above is, of course, a slight exaggeration of the current problem my upper school students face. This particular student probably hadn’t studied for this test since it appears he or she is unfamiliar with the terminology, consequently reading into it something that he or she does understand.
This year we have our own upper school for the first time, and I’m teaching English there. What strikes us (the teachers teaching in upper school) is that our students are exceptionally bad at answering questions in tests. This is a big problem because – let’s face it – we can think of multiple ways to engage our students, we can tutor them in the different ways of studying for tests, but if they don’t know how to read and answer questions, all has been for naught.
Therefore, I’m trying to read up and do some research on how to teach students to analyze a question and formulate suitable answers. Never, in my days at teacher training, have I read or heard anything about this topic and I must say that I find it very hard to find information on it.
What I did find was something called the Black, Red, Green method in which the students have to read the question and underline different parts of the question with these three colours: black for blatant instruction, red for reference point (any definition, term, author, theory, particular text, idea, etc.), and green for gremlin/green light (subtle hints that can easily be missed/hint on how to proceed).
There’s also ‘talk’ about so-called ShadoW-Words, which are words that are common words used in questions like ‘consider’ or ‘discuss’ or ‘show that’. There are specific answer starters for each Shadow-Word that could help the student formulate an answer that actually answers the question.
I couldn’t find anything else on the topic of teaching students to read and answer questions. So, I’m asking begging for your help. If you know articles, websites or books (or anything else for that matter) on reading and answering questions and teaching these strategies to students, let me know in the comments. Thanks!
