The Skill of Questioning – Hargie O.

The main aim of this passage is to stress the importance and relevance of questioning (in all forms) in our lives and communication skills.
It discusses the purpose of questioning, different types of questioning (closed, open, leading and recall to name a few) and when we might use them, and that asking questions can relate to having power i.e. if you’re a doctor or teacher as in the classroom it is the teacher who is asking the majority of the questions and doctors must ask questions to conclude a diagnosis.
The author uses lots of evidence to back up their statements, this was shown when they talked about how children with disabilities are subject to giving untrue and wrong answers when presented with leading questions. The author backed up this statement by having three other texts being referenced too. This means that what they are saying has been looked into and hypothesised by others. They have also backed up their evidence with diagrams of conversations, to emphasise the points they are making.
Waterman et al. (2001) claims that children become less accurate when they are asked closed questions, this is because when asked opened questions they will keep talking with all details they can remember with the odd prompt, whereas closed questions result in children responding with less detailed answers as they respond with what they have interpreted from the question. They also can get confused with yes or no questions because they may respond with no if they don’t understand the question or disagree rather than that being their actual response.

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