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The explanatory questions They are questions that aim to find the causes or antecedents of a phenomenon to understand it in context and in depth. For example: What were the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire?
When a question of this type is well answered, it is assumed that both the questioner and the person answering have knowledge on the subject.
- See also: Open and closed questions
What are explanatory questions used for?
Explanatory questions are fundamental to education. When taking the exam, the explanatory questions are useful for the student to effectively demonstrate how much they know about the subject: it is likely that here the answers are extensive and a certain part of the student's merit is transformed into their ability to synthesize and write.
However, many teachers prefer to avoid these kinds of questions due to the length and difficulty in correcting, and they favor closed or multiple-choice questions.
The explanatory questions, moreover, are the most open and, therefore, it is usual that they work as triggers. All the fields that include debates are nourished by these kinds of questions and are the main protagonists in the field of philosophy (philosophical questions), a subject linked to the formulation of questions that do not have clear and concrete answers, which aim to generate reflection.
Examples of explanatory questions
- What were the causes that generated the economic crisis of 1929?
- Why do wars exist if the world would work better in peace?
- Why is telephone communication so bad in this city?
- Why did Jorge Luis Borges never win the Nobel Prize?
- Explain the photosynthesis process
- Why is the division of public power a system of simultaneous control?
- Why are there clouds in the sky?
- How do computers work?
- Why do some newspapers only speak well of the government?
- How is the digestive process carried out in the human body?
- Why should boys go to a separate bathroom from girls?
- What are borders for?
- Why are the countries of Europe the most technologically advanced?
- What are the dead buried for?
- How can hunger exist if the world produces enough food for its entire population?
- How are the enormous sociocultural differences in Latin America explained?
- Why are those born in African countries always the fastest in Olympic competitions?
- Why did the capitalist and communist countries fight together during World War II?
- How did the independence struggle of our country begin?
- What is the meaning of human life in the world?
Other types of questions:
- Rhetorical questions
- Mixed questions
- Closed questions
- Complementation questions
