Have you ever sat through an examination and wondered what goes through the examiner’s mind when grading papers or how some people score well and others don’t? Or what is it that would make your answer stand out from others? Or how to structure your answer. As students, we have been accustomed to reading comprehension and answering questions accordingly but growing up, we tend to forget the basics of answering simple questions, often because we don’t understand the question or have been taught a certain way, so we follow the same method.
While some questions are pretty straightforward, the others somehow are conceptual, leading you to structure your answers in a more particular way that analyzes your reflective thinking process.
Even though it is usually easy to decipher your answer to a specific question, it may not be easy to structure it. Therefore, it is essential to understand that there is more to a response than its content. It involves structuring Evaluating answers is a task and delivering clear, concise, yet engaging solutions is an art.
However, before we dive into understanding the art of answering questions, let us first consider the types of questions that generally exist and how each differs from the other and requires a different approach.
TYPES OF QUESTIONS:
We have all come across questions – from comprehension to writing exams as a student or sitting for an interview, answering questions has been a dilemma. Every question seeks to collect different sets of information, yet they are all asked to gain insight or develop better solutions.
Below are widely used types of questions. Let us take a look at them:
Dichotomous questions or Closed-ended questions:
Dichotomous questions or Closed-ended questions are used to elicit focused and brief responses. They are a Yes/No question and can either be right or wrong. Such questions are easy to answer since there is a limitation to the answers and can be used early on in conversations or to gather facts.
Open-ended questions
In contrast to closed-ended questions, open-ended questions are potentially seeking elaborate and detailed responses. They are creative and allow the responder to think critically.
Leading or loaded questions
Leading questions relatively seek a person’s judgment and prompt them to think over before they answer carefully. Such questions can be mainly used with kids to draw out better answers, giving them the opportunity to think and reflect back. In addition, these questions help shape the conversations and help you understand the person well.
Strategic questions
Strategic questions dive deeper into details and are asked to elicit detailed answers where a person is compelled to channel their reflective thinking into play. In many cases, strategic questions can either be right or wrong. Such questions are usually asked to assess the respondent’s thought process or how far the concept is clear.
While there certainly are more questions, these by far remain the most common to be asked. To understand how each of them is answered, it is imperative to note that content knowledge is not the only requisite. Every question is requested to understand your knowledge, and how to answer them can be easily understood by keeping the pointers given below in mind.
A. Read instructions carefully
After the papers are handed out to you, the first and foremost thing to do is to read the question paper thoroughly! Carefully review each instruction and evaluate what the examiner asks you in each question. To ensure your answers don’t deviate from what is asked, underline the keywords that the question holds explicitly so that it’s easier to look at them while you answer.
Some questions may contain specific instructions such as writing the question number, underlining, circles, bold, or drawing a diagram. If you see such instructions, follow them! These may be required to evaluate or seek your perspective and knowledge about a particular topic.
B. Understanding the nature of the question asked
When taking an exam, we hurry to answer all the questions before time runs out, or we forget the answers. While skimming through the question paper for instructions, we often come across terms such as define, describe, elaborate, or a scenario-based question. Pick up the instructions, so you can better answer each question. By default, we also check each question’s score and dive straight into answering the questions before thinking about how to respond.
A thorough understanding of the question results from reading the question carefully. Questions stating define seek brief information about a particular topic. In contrast, questions like describing or elaborating require you to jot down or narrate the in-depth knowledge of the specific concept.
C. Structuring the answers
As kids, we have been accustomed to comprehension – read the passage and answer the questions and structure them by finding your answer from the question itself, for instance – Question: “What is your favorite color?” To answer this question, it is essential to structure your answer in a sentence by using half of the question! You may wonder how so. To simply put, you extract some of the words from the question. Such as the question: “What is your favorite color?”
You extract “favorite color” from it and add “My” before your favorite color. The answer will then become, “My favorite color is Red.”
Well, this is a relatively simple approach mostly taught to toddlers. It is a technique taught to best structure your answer.
After carefully reading the instructions, plan how you want to go about your answer. Jot down all the main points, so you have a clear picture of what your answer looks like. Reorder all the issues, so you have the best structure.
Once you learn to follow all these steps, mastering the art of questions will not be a problem
