Question-based learning

It was raining last time I was typing and it's raining again today... it means a lot of time has passed since my last post. There has been a hot summer and I've been quite busy running around my children and watching them grow, mumble and even walk their first steps. I've been turning myself into a little robot, waking up at 5 and doing nothing , but everything until 11 at night. I lost track of many things I used to watch or follow... today I found out Scott Thornbury has just changed his blog posts, basically started a new one and I am really interested in the new format and new teaching ideas he is ready to explore. I have so little time for reading that I have to run through the posts or flip through some pages... I sometimes get some teaching ideas and they never get down on paper, but I hope I can slowly get back to this kind of living too.
Not to lose my practice I still have some private classes that keep me updated and I can share some ideas with you.

Asking questions can sometimes be a good reinforcing exercise at any level, because it seems the hardest job for all my students. I would advise using this as many times as possible, especially because that's also the best way for a non-native speaker to understand the grammatical structures. We all know that the theoretical explanation it's just for academical purposes, in real life speaking comes fluently and naturally only if these "rules" are clearly understood and practiced long enough to become part of the current language the students are familiar with.
Only through questions we can set a more vivid learning environment, because we actually ask more than answer, curiosity is the one starting most of the conversations (think of the daily gossip). "How, where, why, what?" become the core of any dialogue. So here are some ideas for practicing question-asking:
- When starting a new lesson the students must be curious about the others latest "adventures" so we can simply start with each student being allowed to ask 2 "hot" questions related to his classmates daily life. This can usually make way for the Present simple, Present Perfect or Past Simple practice.
- "Your dreams" (Future Simple practice or Second Conditional for more advanced groups) can work if each student is asked to write some of his wildest dreams on a sheet of paper, then fold it and put it in a box, or a hat. Then the trick is for the classmates to find out whose piece of paper is being read aloud by the teacher.
- "Questions Jeopardy" can work very well for a revision lesson. The idea is to have the answer and request the question. It can be fun and tricky for most of the students. You can have answers such as last year, when you came, to Paris, to my mother, just for fun..., for many years, etc. I found this type of activity most rewarding in terms of grammar practice.
- "Stronger wins" can be a good game too. You need a long string or rope and number it like a ruler into as many parts as you fell like, split the class in two and have them play the pull the rope game, but in this case not using the physical force, but the "question power", that means if the 1st team asks a question gets to pull the rope towards them 10 centimeters( for example), the other teams needs to find a logical question that can follow the one the 1st team asked. If one team misses the question, the others get closer to the end of the rope. And the game goes on for as many questions the teacher sets the game for. It can be fun and challenging, because this game involves not only question phrasing but linking them into a coherent dialogue.
- For younger students the "Why?" game fits like a glove, because children naturally do that, asking as many "why"-s as they can. So play that too, set a topic or more and have the students compete by awarding the best number of questions asked on the chosen topic.
- "The alphabet game" can work for questions and high-level students because here you can also teach them linker-s, some words that help us phrase a question. I will give you an example : One student says the alphabet in his mind and the others say STOP. Let's say he stops at P. One student from the opposite team should phrase a question by starting with P. So he can say Perhaps I am allowed to ask you why you like so much scuba diving. If the alphabet counter stop of F, they can say For many years I have been wondering why  you  don't tell us your real name... This way the students are ready to phrase longer questions, indirect questions that are so much used in real life language.
These are some of the games I found well-working in class and I am sure there can be so many more. Hope it was useful and that I made you question yourselves about funny question-asking games that can be used as TEFL means :) Any other ideas are welcomed!