Elaborative Questioning as a Learning Strategy
Elaborative interrogation, a method that encourages curiosity and engagement, involves asking ‘How?’ and ‘Why?’ and then trying to provide answers to these questions. It also seeks to make connections between different ideas, a crucial aspect of effective learning. At the same time, it’s also beneficial to think about how they’re different.
Start by listing all the main ideas and concepts you need to learn from your class materials. Then, go through the list, asking yourself how these ideas work and why they occur. Look for answers to your questions in your textbook, notes, and other class materials.
It’s very useful to have a range of questions to ask:
- How does it work?
- How do you know?
- Why is it like that?
- Why did they do that?
- What happened next?
- What’s the alternative?
When you're elaborating on ideas, it's important to make connections between different concepts. This means not just understanding each concept in isolation, but also understanding how they relate to each other. A practical way to do this is to compare two ideas - consider their similarities and differences. This process of 'making connections' is a key part of elaborative interrogation.
Describe how the ideas you are studying apply to your own life experiences or memories you have. Also, as you go through your day, notice things happening around you and make links to the class concepts you're learning. Doing this helps space out your learning over time instead of cramming.
Initially, use your class materials to help fill gaps as you elaborate. But work towards describing and explaining the ideas on your own, without the materials in front of you. In other words, practice retrieving the information from memory. You will still need to check your answers with a reliable source.
