Conversation Skills

Questions for Conversation Skills and Responding with Evidence

Elaborate and Clarify:

What do you mean by…?  Can you tell me more about…?  Would you be more specific?  How does that connect to…?  I think it means… In other words…

Support Ideas with Examples:

Can you give me an example from the text?  Where in the text does it say that?  Are there examples from other texts?  Why do you say that?  What would illustrate that?  For instance…

Build On and /or Challenge a Partner’s idea:

Would you add to this idea?  Do you agree?  What are other ideas?  What might be another point of view?  How does this connect back to the question?  I would like to add…  I would like to follow up that with… Another way I see it is…

Paraphrase:

So/Therefore, you are saying that… In other words… Did I hear you say?  Essentially, I hear you thinking…

Synthesize Conversation Points:

How can we bring this all together?  What can we agree upon?  What main points can we share?  What was our original question?  What Key idea ^can we take away?  The evidence seems to suggest…