The worst question in teaching (Part 1)

By Scott Donald

Do you understand?

Let’s forget the fact that, outside of teaching, if you asked this question, it probably wouldn’t go down so well. In the real world, Do you understand? is more likely to be said as part of a threatening statement:

If you come home this drunk again, you’re sleeping on the sofa. Do you understand.

Whereby its meaning is more akin to:

If your idiot brain has been able to process this threat, signal with a nod or a whimper.

Across boardroom tables, in Whatsapp messages, and on Skype calls, I can’t imagine Do you understand? is a question which is often asked; at least, not in order to genuinely check understanding. However, when communicating with people who don’t speak English as a first language, this question is preferable to any of the politer, but potentially confusing, alternatives, Are you following/Do you get what I mean/Does that make sense? Yet, however a teacher chooses to say it, the bad news is that they probably shouldn’t be saying it at all.

It’s not that there is anything particularly wrong with the question itself, it’s more that it’s indicative of a larger problem. Because the moment you ask your students that question, the second it escapes your mouth, it suggests that whatever you were trying to convey before asking it has flown straight over the students’ heads. You are probably asking the question because you can feel the mounting befuddlement weaving its way through the classroom; the sense of confusion is palpable, and the furrowed brows and blank stares simply confirm what you already know: they haven’t understood.

And the issue with the question is that it simply does nothing to solve the problem. If you were colour blind, and you and I were disarming a car bomb and I said, I want you to cut the blue wire. Do you understand? You could yes, because you think you know which one the blue wire is. Whereas if I said, I want you to cut the blue wire. Can you point to it? Then I would say, no, that’s the yellow one. In hindsight, asking someone who is colour blind to disarm a car bomb was probably a bad idea.

In the language classroom, do you understand is sometimes uttered when teachers are giving instructions, or when they are trying to clarify words, phrases or grammar to the students. In terms of instructions, the solutions, or better alternatives, are as simple as they are controversial. If you’re giving the instructions orally, give them at a suitable pace, in language you think the students will understand. Then, support this by:

• Using an instruction checking question: How many people do I want you to talk to? Where do you write the answers?
• Having written instructions, e.g. on a handout, or written/projected on the board.
• Doing a demo, e.g. if the exercise were 8 multiple choice questions, the teacher would do number 1 together with the rest of the class.

The controversy lies with which one is the most effective, and teachers and trainers are only too happy to tell you their opinion. Like most things though, the answer is probably that it depends on the teacher, the students and the activity. The alternative is, of course, to do none of these things. As a teacher gets to know a group, they might feel that they have a sufficient grasp of their students’ understanding and attention levels to deliver the instructions crystal clear, first time, without checking if they’ve been understood. I’m guilty of this myself. But when it comes to more complex tasks, the inevitable happens: I monitor the students and find out one of them has been doing the task wrongly, or even worse, doing the wrong task. In those moments, my mind goes back to my CELTA and I remember why instruction checking is still important.

The other situation where we might hear a teacher utter the forbidden question, is when they are clarifying language. This process can sometimes be straightforward. If the item is apple, we can clarify what an apple is by showing a picture, or an actual apple. Unless this was the student-s first time seeing an apple, this should be a sufficient: they will recognise the apple and pair it with the equivalent in their language. We don’t need to do anything to check they have understood, e.g. hold up an orange and ask is this an apple? Similarly, there is no need to elicit the colours of an apple. It’s not necessary to draw a flowchart and indicate the various stages of seed, sapling, tree and apple. You might do these things, but it would be for a different purpose: to revise other vocabulary and engage younger learners, or teach them about them some biology; but to convey the word apple, the picture or the apple itself is sufficient.

But what about if the word is: creep, geek, or freak? What if it’s an expression like: pull yourself together; pull someone’s leg; or pull some strings? Or, a grammatical structure: I used to be slim; I’m used to being slim; I’m getting used to being slim. All of these are much more complex than apple and therefore, teaching them is a little more complex than showing a picture. Try it yourself. Give geek a google, or freak. Are these images sufficient to explain the meaning of these words and their modern day usages? Your student might well go out and offend someone if the explanation is too basic. We have to appreciate that teaching these more complex items is a two-stage process, with the initial conveying coming first, and checking understanding coming afterwards. And while there are many ways you might choose to approach this, again, asking do you understand is neither a natural method, nor is it an efficient one.

In the next article, we will look at some of the alternatives to this question when it comes to clarifying language. Then in part 3, using action research, we will discover which methods teachers love, and which ones they hate.

Bibliography

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/checking-understanding (An excellent article that is also critical of teachers asking do you understand, and its partner in crime, ok?)