Reading The Question

It is probably one of the most cliche sentences that you will hear in the classroom today `read the question`. However it is the obviously fundamental and unfortunately often overlooked skill that separates those who do well in exams from those who do poorly. When an educator talks to a learner about reading the question the learner has to understand what that educator is really saying. To understand that it is important to realise that there are different levels of reading; scanning, observing, engaging. Scanning is a very common way of reading when you don`t really think that the information will be that important, for example the fine print on the mobile phone contract, at the time of signing, you just want the phone and to get out of the shop. You rush the information and if questioned about it seconds later, you wouldn`t be able to answer anything meaningful. Observing is taking the time to actually read every word there (good) but still not thinking about the meaning behind the text. Think, `don`t walk on the grass`, okay so you don`t walk on the grass but you haven`t really thought why. Finally we have engaging, when a student engages with a question they read the information fully, highlight key terms and describe in other ways what the question is really requiring you to do. Remember that the examiner wants you to demonstrate a series of skills and highlight that you know some stuff. Unfortunately they cannot get around the whole country to every student, so they write questions. Questions that are designed to get students of different abilities to answer questions differently and so show different levels of skill. That is why it is very important to engage fully with the question, and therefore demonstrate the highest level of skill and knowledge that you can.