Probing for learner understanding
How do you know whether a student understands what you are saying? One clue, of course, is by whether the student is looking at and concentrating on you and your comments. But this clue is not foolproof; we have all had moments of staring at a speaker while daydreaming, only to realize later that we have not heard anything that the speaker said. It is sometimes important, therefore, to probe more actively how much students are actually understanding during lessons or other activities.