Tag: ba17-18

In my opinion, the aim of this chapter was to put across the point that there are various different types of questions and how these questions are asked (and who they are asked by) can determine someone’s answer. The point that questioning is a core life skill and that it is almost impossible to communicate without doing so is also highlighted promptly.

There are a few themes which run across the chapter including the acquisition of questions and how questions are asked and addressed across various career groups including teachers and doctors. Education and children is a prominent theme weaved throughout the text, demonstrating to us that children can be overwhelmed by teachers asking questions. For example, it was found that on average, the teacher asked a question once every 72 seconds (Corey 1940). However, I would argue that asking questions is a second nature and as previously mentioned, is part of daily conversation. Thus showing it is difficult not to ask questions and is most likely to be done accidently by teachers and they are in-fact not always trying to challenge the children when a question is composed.

Again, in terms of children, there is a known hesitation amongst 13-16 year old children in asking questions in the classroom in fear of a negative reaction from classmates (Dillon, 1988)(Daly et Al. 1994). From previous experience this, I believe this is a widely known fact across the world and I believe that it is somewhat natural.

Hargie also discuses different types of questions and there effects and uses. The most discussion was based around open and closed questions. It was seen that asking an open question was more easily answered as it enables us to go into depth; whereas a closed question is often only answered using few words which restricts us. However this can be argued otherwise as another statement was made, suggesting that open questions may not be as appropriate with respondents of lower intellectual. Personally, I disagree with such a set statement as I believe there are valid points to back up both sides as discussed above.

Reference list:

‘Finding out about others: the skill of questioning’, in Hargie, O. (2011) Skilled Interpersonal Communication: Research, Theory and Practice. 5^th ed. London: Routledge.

On embarking my journey at UWS I did not know what to expect. I had no negative thoughts on what it may turn out to be like; however, I did not expect to enjoy it as much as I currently am. The weeks are going by so quickly and I can’t help but be excited to be on placement on the upcoming month.

Despite coming straight from school, I am fortunate enough to have experience in a classroom. I made time for this during my free periods at school as I knew it would benefit me greatly in my life goal of attending University to study Primary Education. During my time at school I had to work extremely hard in order to be here today. Of course there is other options, but I am greatly determined and wanted to get to university as soon as possible.

When I was told that we would be blogging as part of our course, I was slightly apprehensive as I worried that I would be stuck for words! However, I was also excited as I have always loved the idea of having a blog, but I never knew what I could blog about. I know that this blog will help me develop my literacy skills and writing reflectively and I look forward to viewing my academic development throughout my time on the course.

My biggest fear on coming to university was knowing I would have to do Maths and French which were definitely my worst subjects during my 6 years at school. In terms of the Maths class I am pleasantly surprised (so far). I have enjoyed getting to grips with what I will eventually have to teach children in Maths and the many ways this can be taught and explained, using various resources and not always referring to a textbook! My aim in teaching is to make Maths as fun and active as possible. When I think back to my time in primary school, maths was not a fun and interactive lesson that I would look forward to, if it was, perhaps my perception on maths and my skills would be completely different. As well as this, I find the Haylock maths textbook and workbook extremely useful to refer to after the lectures/workshops if I didn’t quite grasp a certain concept.

After completing my first French class I was left slightly overwhelmed, despite sitting it at Higher level in my 6th year at school. I knew I would struggle as I did at school so I went with my instinct to keep at 1.1 level. My reasoning behind this is because I want to start from scratch and perfect my basics, I hardly remember any from school! I feel I have made the right decision with this as I was not in my comfort zone in the class. I hope to improve in all aspects of French as I work through the module and I am determined to perfect my French.

Overall, I am ready to challenge myself and produce the best work I can while at university.

My first couple of weeks at UWS have been intriguing to say the least. From sitting in on lectures to being challenged to come out of my comfort zone in workshops. I am becoming more confident each day in being able to organise and divide my workload, as well as taking care of a young family and working.

The workshops are allowing me to put the theory I am learning in lectures into practice. For example, in one of our SitComm workshops, being able to try out using different tones in our voices and using the different skills we learned about in that morning’s lecture to become more expressive and confident speakers. Placement is also something I am looking forward to and hopefully I am successful in putting what I have already learned at UWS into practice. Maths is also a module I am really enjoying, despite dreading it before I started university as it was always a subject I really struggled with throughout high school and college.

Gaining a place at UWS to study Education was one of the first steps in helping me start my journey to becoming a primary teacher. It hasn’t been an easy journey to get here, but I persevered and am now determined to reach my goal.

Chapter 5 “ Finding Out About Others: the skill of questioning”

The aim of this chapter is to explore the function and effects of various types of questions in different social settings, the kind of things mentioned throughout the chapter is how questions are used in different careers, for example, lawyers, teachers, and doctors. One section of the chapter is titled “Purpose Of Questions” , in this section it states that Bolden ( 2009:122) pointed out: “ Questions and answers are among the most readily recognizable and pervasive ways through which participants achieve and negotiate their communicative goals”. We are told that questions have a variety of purposes but this will depend on the context of the interaction. Different situations that questions could be asked is; teachers to pupils to check their understanding during or after a lesson, doctors to make a diagnosis and salesmen/saleswomen to consumer to asses consumer’s needs and if these need are being satisfied. Also in the chapter, it discusses how in interview style situations questions can be asked to confuse and throw the person being interviewed off guard as they do not know what type of questions will be asked next.

Wilson (1990) states that there is also evidence out there to prove that when a long question is asked, a longer response is tended to be given instead of a short one. I found that I agreed with pretty much all the points being made in the chapter, the biggest difficulty I would say I had would be reading some of the more challenging words that I hadn’t seen before. To help myself out I used an online Education dictionary to help clarify the meanings to which I then wrote down in my notes for future reference.

Chapter 5 “Finding out about others: the skill of questioning” (Hargie, O. 2011)

The main aim of Chapter 5 is to examine nature, function and effects of various forms and types of questions across a range of social situations. The main themes are; Children, Crime and professional sectors such as teaching and doctors. A claim that is made in this chapter is that in the health sector doctors and nurses were the main people who asked questions to their patients. Their patients would not ask questions as Siminoff et al. (2oo6) states that, patients never asked very many questions as they did not want it to seem like they were lacking in knowledge about the situations they were in. There is an idea throughout the chapter that the people who ask the questions are powerful people such as; teachers, doctors, lawyers and detectives, this is mainly down to them knowing the answers to the questions that they ask. Although when asked questions by someone the respondent may feel anxious and become stressed regardless if they know the answer to the question or not. This is because they do not want to be judged by the answer that they give. For example in a school scenario where a teacher asks pupils a question pupils may feel anxious to answer the question the teacher is asking. I agree with the majority of the chapter although there are somethings I disagree with for example; Closed questions being the most important set of questions to be asked, I feel that closed questions can often miss out some important information that open questions can provide. Some of the words I struggled with were multifaceted, stenographer and ubiquitous.

Reference List

“Finding out about others: the Skill of questioning” – Chapter 5 – Hargie, O. (2011) Skilled interpersonal Communication: Research, Theory and Practice 5th ed. London: Routledge

I feel like the luckiest person to be part of the BA Honours Course at UWS. Becoming a primary school teacher has been my goal for as long as I can remember!

The first few weeks have gone by in a flash but I have enjoyed every minute of it so far (I might not be saying this when exam time creeps up). I have created this blog to document my journey at UWS, however since I have never blogged before I am a little hesitant of what I am meant to be doing, but I am sure over time this will become second nature to me.

I feel fortunate to have some classroom based experience. I have worked as a classroom assistant in a number of Ayrshire primary schools which gave me a greater appreciation of the rewards and the challenges primary teachers encounter on a daily basis.

I am not naturally ‘brainy’ and I have taken a scenic route to be here. Last academic year, I worked two jobs, studied an HNC in Social Sciences and did a night course in Higher English and achieved an A in both courses. This was not easy and it was as stressful as it sounds! However, I work hard at everything I set my mind to and when I have an end goal I will do everything possible to get to where I need to be.

As I have mentioned, academia does not come naturally to me but I feel the practical skills I have gained so far and the dedicated person I am will reduce some of the stresses I will face during my time at UWS.

During the first couple of weeks at UWS I have been enjoying starting all the different classes that are incorporated within my course. Beforehand, I was the most confident about starting literacy, as English was my favourite subject at school; therefore I felt like this module was where I could contribute to a high degree and share a lot of knowledge within.  Overall I was most nervous about starting Spanish as I have never studied it before, therefore I was hesitant as to what level of difficulty this particular module would be like. However, after looking at all the course handbooks for each module I quickly realised the courses are all set out nicely and easy to follow, this allowed me to look ahead and see what was going to be covered within the next few weeks.   Being able to do this put me at ease as the unknown of what each module would be like was the issue that was worrying me the most.

However, as I am onto my fourth week I am finding all my modules equally understandable and enjoyable.  I am feeling a lot more confident about Spanish as I have realised all the people in my class are also beginners to the subject, therefore we are all in the same position and learning together.  Although literacy was the module I felt most confident about beginning, I have realised every module is preparing me for all the different aspects of becoming a primary teacher, so although I am still confident in literacy, I am also feeling more confident in all the other modules as well.  Due to all of this, in the future going onto my second, third and fourth year of the course I will remind myself that there is no point in feeling anxious over modules that I haven’t even explored yet, as by the end of the year they could end up being the module I find most enjoyable overall.

After getting over the shock and excitement of receiving my Mathematics exam results at the end of August, the thought of coming to university became more real and daunting. Having been out of education for ten years, and becoming a wife and mother, I was anxious but ready to take the next step in my life and do something for myself that would effectively better not only me but my family also. Becoming a primary educator has been an innate desire of mine since early secondary school. I am thankful for the opportunities I have been given to allow myself to get to the position I am in today, currently submersed in university life by making my first blog post on campus in UWS Ayr library.

Having successfully completed a SWAP course ay Ayr college in the last academic year, I felt prepared to a certain extent that I would be confident with handling and analysing texts and other types of work, and getting on with the task at hand efficiently. However, since starting university properly (after induction week) I have felt slightly overwhelmed at the volume of academic reading to be completed. As a visual learner I find having the texts in physical form to highlight and note take to help me absorb and make sense of the information I am taking in.

Since having my first Spanish class on Friday of last week, the thoughts and feelings I had before going there were not the same as the ones I had after leaving. I felt it was very fast paced and didn’t have a lot of opportunity to go over phrases and words. However, I am hoping that a lot of my independent study and use of other resources will pull my confidence levels up from the ground.

Overall, I would say my experience at UWS so far has met with the expectations I had, albeit the workload and amount of reading is slightly more than what I first expected we would have in BA1. However, I feel to be an effective educator these are important skills and passions to possess when influencing younger minds and setting them up to be effective lifelong learners.