Concept Checking Questions (CCQs)

You've just explained your students new grammar or taught them new vocabulary and you need to check if they understand the concept correctly. What is the most common way to do this? Yeah, you've got it - asking questions such as "Do you understand?" or "Is this clear?" Unfortunately, apart from this being the most common way, it is also the least effective one because very scarcely you will come across a student who will be brave enough to admit he doesn't understand what you've been talking about for the past several minutes. Would you anyway? Would you like to be apparently the only person among your peers dumb enough to not grasp the new material? This problem however doesn't need to be limited to the matter of courage among your students - they may honestly believe they understand the concept correctly simply because you weren't specific enough. Say you've explained the word "thumb" by raising your own thumb. Clear as a day, right? But are you talking about your thumb or any finger? Or your whole hand? Or you might be even miming the activity of hitch-hiking! All of this creates ambiguity that adds to the possible confusion among your students.

Concept checking questions are designed to deal exactly with this - you need to come up with a question that will check the understanding among your students without revealing the word itself in case of vocabulary or the grammar pattern in case of grammar explanation (especially the latter one can be very tricky because you usually need to use the past simple tense to talk about the past).

So what would be a correct way of checking the understanding of the word thumb?

• "On what part of your body can you find a thumb?"
• "How many thumbs do you have?"
• "Is this thumb?" (and lifting your index finger)

CCQs in general should exclude all ambiguity and leave no space for a different interpretation. This can be tricky because you usually cannot compose CCQs in advance for every single new item of vocabulary which means you must come up with them on-the-go.

Slightly harder than vocabulary are grammar CCQs. Say you've just been with your students over the difference in the use of Present Simple and Present Simple Continuous and one of your students produces the sentence:

"I am playing football every Wednesday."

What would be the correct way of correcting the student by using CCQs?

• Are you playing football right now?
• Is it Wednesday today?
• Do you play football every Wednesday?

(this naturally assumes that the students are aware that Present Simple is used for events that occur repeatedly and regularly, and Present Simple Continuous for events that are happening at the moment the sentence is being spoken)