Oral Langauage

QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS

Although I did not have any exposure to theatre in middle school via a class (in fact, most schools do not have a theatre class before high school), I was exposed by attending high school theatre performances. These performances influenced me without even being aware of it, as I watched and admired older friends participate on the stage. In high school I was exposed to theatre actually though my Speech class (which was taught by the drama teacher). I began participating in theatre first in district and state competition. I stayed in the competition realm even into sophomore year when I auditioned for the Shakespeare Festival competition in Cedar City.  That experience influenced the rest of my theatrical career, and by senior year I was very active in Drama club and participating in two shows. When I arrived at Utah State I originally wanted to be Biology major, but soon realized how much I missed theatre. After attending a performance here, I decided I needed to change to Theatre Education.

I do not remember any specific discussions from high school theatre but while here at USU I have had many meaningful discussions in my theatre classes. We often have discussions with a wide variety of opinions represented within our class. One that really stands out to me was a discussion about censorship in high school theatre classes. The discussion was actually led by a student but I felt like it still followed the five elements of effective discussions. The questions were AUTHENTIC and had no real answers such as “Should we censor high school students in theatre?”  That is a hard question to answer and there were varying opinions and thoughts on the subject. The student who led the discussion was very good at the UPTAKE element because he always asked things like, “Why do you think that way?” He incorporated student answers into the discussion so it never felt like a question answer session. As far as the LEVEL of EVALUATION element, he also tried to give feedback to student’s comments by saying things like “I can see why you think that” or even “That’s interesting. Can you talk about that more?” Since we were all in a college level class the COGNITIVE LEVEL element was probably much higher than in a high school discussion. All the students in the class were expected to come well prepared and versed in the assigned articles in order to participate in the discussions. The QUESTION SOURCE stemmed from being assigned to discuss this topic and the purpose of this particular discussion was to voice opinions and possible solutions to the problem we face as theatre educators.    

I enjoyed reading this article because it made me think about my own process of choosing discussion questions, and reacting as students are giving answers. What makes a good question anyway?