Use “close Questioning” to Challenge Yourself While Studying
While studying, you can try to just memorize phrases and facts, but what you should really try to do is retain the concepts for the long term. One way to do this is to use “close questioning,” a technique that helps you learn more effectively by challenging the facts you are learning.
What is clarifying interrogation?
Inquiry is an important part of learning, which is why it is at the heart of some of the best teaching methods, such as SQ3R and KWL . When researching, you not only need to remember what is being offered to you, but you also need to delve into it and understand it by asking questions. Typically when using SQ3R or KWL you ask questions before you start reading to find the answers. When you try to conduct a detailed interrogation, you ask questions along the way.
Asking questions will help you find answers and make connections that are not immediately obvious in the text, allowing you to really understand what is being said.
How to Learn Through Close Questioning
For this to work for you, you need to evaluate the facts of your material. Let’s say you’re studying accounting. One fact you will learn is that you record debits before credits. You can get by and do reasonably well on tests just knowing this fact without thinking about it any deeper, but if you really want to understand the material, it would be helpful to figure out why you write debits before credits. When you do detailed questioning, you ask yourself questions like these after looking at the facts so that you really understand the meaning of it all. Here your detailed question is: “Why do we record debits and not credits?” Your next question might be, “Why do we write debit as a positive number?” The reason it is done this way is to make it easier to credit incoming money.
Start by identifying the basic facts you need to know. You can easily do this by writing them down as you go through the text, notes, or lecture. Every statement or basic fact matters. You can also try using artificial intelligence like ChatGPT to generate facts. As a test, I simply asked ChatGPT, “What are the basic facts you need to learn for accounting?” I was given 16, almost all of which were excellent for detailed questioning. For example, the program told me that International Financial Reporting Standards are used in many countries for financial reporting. This is probably an answer to the test question in itself, but to really understand the point of all this, I might ask: “Why do countries need a set of accounting standards?” Which countries use IFRS? (If you’re using ChatGPT or a similar service, just make sure it gives you the real facts; test them to make sure they’re true.)
On a separate sheet of paper, write down questions about your facts, and then start looking for answers. Answers may come from materials outside of your class lecture, notes, or texts, so don’t be afraid to dig deeper. Ultimately, answering these questions will help you make the connections you need to truly learn the material and remember it well.