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How did you choose ... ?
Melbourne University, Kymberly Fergusson

Conversation prompts

How did you choose ... ?

Being able to ask open questions is a skill you need to develop even in your native language. 'How' questions require much more than just a yes or no!

Use the following prompts to dive deep and understand your conversation partners’ way of thinking and how they felt at those times.

How did you choose your university or college?

t’s a hard decision for many students – choosing a university or college, not to mention a degree!

What factors influenced your decision on where you wanted to study?

For myself, it was a campus that was not in the middle of the city (I’m a little crowd-a-phobic), but still in my home city of Melbourne, one that had a lot of park-like open spaces and good libraries, a swimming pool, a medical clinic and access to counsellors, all on campus.

I went to several university open days to get the feel of the many different campuses in my home city. Once I had knocked out the ones I didn’t feel ‘comfortable’ at, I chose my final university based on the courses I wanted to do.

If I had my time over, I would perhaps choose a different degree, focusing on learning languages, and one which would have allowed me to study overseas for a year.

Although, I’m more than happy with the friends I made during my particular course, and especially that it led me to lecture in the subjects I previously studied, I’m not using my programming knowledge in my current line of work or studies overly much!

How did you feel when … ?

What were the five most important news stories that have happened in the last five years that you felt most strongly about?

  1. How did you feel? And why did you feel so strongly?
  2. If you can remember, what were you doing at the time when the news broke?
  3. Did you have any news stories, situations or feelings in common with your conversation partners?


Categories | PROMPTS
Tags | language learning, teaching
17 Oct 2018