Formal questions used in the Socratic Method of teaching tend to be specific and leading. The goal is to guide the student into deriving the correct conclusion. Broad or general questions are not well suited to this task. Designing narrow questions that logically lead students to a conclusion typically involves more time and effort than construction of informal questions.

In a very real sense, you are attempting to elicit from students the premises necessary to prove the conclusion of an argument. Hence, one successful design technique is to begin by constructing a deductive argument that proves your conclusion with a series of premises. (Tip: The Resource Links in the Reconstructing Arguments section at the bottom of this page provide details on how to create deductive arguments). Once you have developed your syllogism, you can use its premises to formulate your questions. You start with the first premise and work your way forward to the conclusion.

As an example, if you wanted to lead students to the conclusion that "Socrates was mortal," you could construct the following deductive argument:

(1) All men are mortal.
(2) Socrates was a man.
(3) Therefore, Socrates was mortal.

Using Premise (1) of the argument as your starting point, you create the question, "What does it mean to be mortal?" You can anticipate a response like, "It means to die." To which you could replay, "What sorts of things die?" Students might list a number of creatures, finally hitting upon, "Man." Having established Premise (1), you move onto Premise (2). Here, you provide guidance by stating the fact, "Socrates was a man." To elicit the conclusion, you ask, "Based on what you know so far, what can you say about Socrates?" The likely answer would be, "Socrates was mortal." Naturally, this is a very simplified example, but it can serve as a guide for tackling complex arguments, which require a longer series of formal questions to resolve.

As you design your formal questions, you should take into consideration the level of prior knowledge students have about a subject. If your topic demands a special vocabulary, such as in business, philosophy, or science, be sure to introduce and define the key terms necessary to understand your questions and formulate sensible replies. This foundational information can become the preamble for formal questions (e.g., Assets are the things a business owns, can you name of few?).

Although there are no hard and fast rules for designing formal questions, the following guidelines will help you construct effective formal queries:

• To garner student interest, try to compose questions that take a novel approach to the subject. It is also helpful to tailor the questions so that students can readily relate to them.
• Try to create questions that move students incrementally toward the goal. Jumping too far ahead will make it difficult, if not impossible, for students to make the leap and deduce the missing premises.
• Use the design technique described above to ensure that your questions help form logical steps to the desired conclusion.
• Finish with questions that help students to deduce the conclusion from the proceeding evidence (premises). In essence, you are attempting to get students to use deductive reasoning to derive the answer. Your questions should assist them in identifying relevant information and discarding erroneous information.

Over time, you will find which questions are best at eliciting the correct answers from students. It will also become obvious if a series of formal questions is efficient and effective in enabling students to follow the sequence to its logical conclusion. Although there is no magic formula for constructing a good set of formal questions, the above design technique and suggestions will go a long way to shorting this trial and error process.

Resource Links