Overview
One of the more difficult aspects of teaching is learning to ask questions that can both start and sustain a discussion. Often, it is tempting to begin a section with a difficult question or issue raised by the text. For example, you may want to have a discussion about women in the Nineteenth Century and Tennyson's poem Mariana and, because of time limitations, you
may want to begin section by asking your students how the poem comments on women's increased confinement to the home during the Victorian era. But beginning with such a hard question may not be the most effective way to start a discussion for any number of reasons. Some students may not have read or may not remember the poem, and some may not have thought about the work in the same way you have. Frequently, a difficult question like this one asked at the beginning of a discussion section will be answered with silence.

Rather than beginning with an analytical question, it can be much more helpful to begin section with a simple one-one that tests how much the students remember about a text-and then to work up to something more difficult. In other words, it can be helpful to structure your section around a series of questions that demand increasingly complex kinds of thinking. Try asking questions that will move students from, for example, remembering the plot of the story (a relatively simple task) to analyzing why the events occur in a particular order (a more difficult task). This kind of sequence--one that moves students from basic recall to analysis--can be very effective because it ensures that students have the information they need to talk about difficult and complex issues. In addition, asking simpler questions that your students can answer easily will help to give them the confidence to answer more difficult ones.

As you develop your own questions, bear in mind that you are trying to develop a series that will help your students work up to discussing an analytical or theoretical issue. Keeping this larger issue in mind even as you ask much simpler questions will help to keep the conversation structured and focused. Don't be afraid to reveal to students at the beginning of the section what the larger issue of the day is. For the most part, students are grateful for the review of the text that simpler questions provide and-if you tell them where the discussion is headed-they like that you are organized enough to know that the simpler questions are taking them somewhere.

Basic Recall: It is almost always a good idea to test your students' knowledge of a text or a particular aspect of a text before asking them to think more critically about it. Asking questions that demand basic recall of plot or characters often reveals something that you had not anticipated as a problem (for example, that students are confused by the plot, or had no idea that character Y is really X's son). In addition, these questions force students to focus on aspects of the plot that they may not have thought about at all. For example, you may know that a professor is about to give a lecture on dueling in Hamlet, but your students are preoccupied with gender issues and Ophelia's supposed suicide. Asking questions that will make them recall the duels will start them thinking about dueling instead of women. Depending on your class, or the question, you may want to have students take 5 or 10 minutes to write down their answers, or you may want to list the responses on the board. In either case, it is a good idea to create a written record of the details you have asked them to recall so that they can refer back to them later in the discussion.

Examples of Questions and Activities that Ask for Basic Recall

List ten events in Chaucer's The Knight's Tale.

List all of the duels in Hamlet. Who fights in the duels?

When Britomart enters the Castle of Busirane, what does she see on the walls?

What weapons are used during the war in heaven in Book VI of Paradise Lost?

What things are on Belinda's dressing table in The Rape of the Lock?

What phrases are repeated in Tennyson's Mariana?

Women's bodies figure prominently in The Woman Warrior. List five things that happen to women's bodies in part I. List five things that happen to women's bodies in Part II.

Categorizing Information (Similarities, Differences, and Patterns)
Once your students can recall the aspects of the text that will become the focus of discussion, you can then begin to ask questions that require students to see patterns and connections between the details they have just remembered. These kinds of questions will generally ask students to compare and contrast the details that they have just recorded.

Examples of Questions that Ask Students to See Patterns and Categorize Details

What events in Chaucer's The Knight's Tale are repetitions or versions of other events?

Are any aspects of the duels in Hamlet similar? Are any aspects different?

How would you describe the images that Britomart sees on the wall? Are there any images that don't seem to fit?

How would you categorize the weapons used in Book VI of Paradise Lost? For example, some of them are military
weapons. How would you categorize the non-military weapons?

Where do the things on Belinda's dressing table come from?

Are there any breaks in the pattern of repetition in Mariana? When do the repetitions break?

Who inflicts pain on women in part I of The Woman Warrior? Part II? Is the pain women experience in Part I and Part H similar in any way? How is it different?

Analyzing and Generalizing
Once your students have recalled the details of the text and have begun to think about the patterns that they see, you can begin to ask more difficult questions that will ask them to analyze the details of the text. These kinds of questions can take many forms. You may ask students to try figure out why a pattern exists, or why a pattern breaks at a certain moment. You may ask them to try to see the relationship between the work that they have just done and a larger issue that the professor raised in lecture. Or you may want them to use their work to answer a more difficult question about the passage, poem, or text as a whole.

Examples of Questions that Ask Students to Analyze and Generalize

Let's look at one of the repeated events in The Knight's Tale. Why is this event repeated? Do the reasons for this repetition help to explain another set of repeated events?

When do duels occur in Hamlet? Do duels happen in Hamlet at a particular kind of moment?

How can we explain the presence of the images of rape on the walls in the Castle of Busirane? If this is a book about chastity, how do these images test Britomart's chastity?

There is a rift in criticism of Milton. Some of it suggests that the war in heaven is Milton's serious attempt to replicate the convention of the epic war in his own epic. Other criticism suggests that the war in Book VI is a farce. What do you think?

Why do so many of the products on Belinda's table come from overseas and, more specifically, from English Colonies?

Why do the repetitions break at the end of Mariana?

What is the relationship between books I and H of The Woman' Warrior? Does part I raise a question to which part II responds? Is part II a repetition of part I? Does part II revise certain aspects of part I?

Theorization
Frequently, you will run out of time before you can make it to this step. But-if you do have the time-these questions will ask your students to make some general statement about the aspect of the text that they have been studying, to come up with their own theory about why the text is put together in the way that it is, or to explain what the work is saying about a particular topic.

Examples of Questions that Ask Students to Theorize

What is the function of repetition in The Knight's Tale? What is the function of dueling in Hamlet?

If you only had this scene to go on, how would you say that the Castle of Busirane scene defines chastity?

If you only had Book VI of Paradise Lost to go on, what would you say is Milton's attitude toward the English Civil War?

If you only had the dressing table scene to go on, would you say that Pope is writing something that supports or critiques English colonial activities?

Why is there so much repetition in Mariana? Considering that this poem was written at a time when women were increasingly confined to the home, and when women became increasingly outspoken about their rights and liberties, what do you think this poem is saying about women's rights?

Why does Maxine Hong Kingston concentrate so much on the pain inflicted on women's bodies?

Remember: you don't need to know the answer to any of the questions you ask.
The most successful discussions often grow out of questions that you find genuinely interesting and complex.
Your curiosity about the text and willingness to acknowledge ambiguities
will inspire and motivate your students to grapple with the sort of questions that comprise serious literary analysis.