When most people think of speech and language therapy, they think of supporting children who are struggling to use and/or pronounce words. However, an equal part of a speech and language therapist’s role is supporting children who struggle with their comprehension. Understanding and answering questions is a common challenge faced by children with receptive communication difficulties and there are things you can do at home with your child to support their question skills.
A Hierarchy of Questions
When looking at the development of a child’s understanding of questions, Blank’s Levels is a helpful way to think about what a child understands and what they need to learn next. Blank’s Levels of Questioning was developed by psychologist Marion Blank and is a hierarchical way of thinking about question skills. There are four levels of questions that move from simple, concrete questions to more complex, abstract questions. In addition to supporting a child’s understanding of questions, as a child moves through the levels, their reasoning, inferencing, predicting and problem solving skills develop.1
How Can I Use Blank’s Levels with my Child?
When you are helping your child develop their question skills, it is important to work at the right level. Asking too many questions that a child does not understand is confusing and may be frustrating for your child. As a rough guide, children ages 2 to 3 years will be working at Blank’s Levels 1 and 2. Children ages 4 and 5 years will be working at Blank’s levels 3 and 4. If your child sees a speech and language therapist, ask them for guidance about where to start with your child.
What if my Child Does Not Understand the Question?
Make sure you are pausing and giving your child enough time to think about and process the question before expecting an answer. If your child does not understand the question, you can provide a prompt to support their ability to answer. Some prompts that may help your child include:
- Offering a choice: ‘Is it a book or a bear?’
- Physical promoting through pointing or showing
- Providing an answer sentence starter: ‘because the boy needs…’
If your child still does not know how to answer the question following a prompt, model the answer for them. The goal is to help your child understand and answer questions, and they will need to hear good language models to help them learn this skill. If you child repeatedly does not understand questions at a particular Blank’s Level, spend some time working at a lower level to make sure they are secure with more concrete question skills.
Blank’s Levels Explained
Level 1: Matching Perception
At Blanks Level 1, questions focus on things in your child’s immediate environment and responses can be verbal or non verbal. Your child should be able to see the things you are asking about.
Examples of Level 1 questions include:
- Find one like this. (matching objects)
- What can you hear?
- What did you touch?
- What is this? (pointing to an object)
- Who is this? (pointing to a person)
- What is ___ doing?
- Say ‘___’. (imitation)
- What did you see? (remembering items in books)
Level 2: Selective Analysis of Perception
At Blanks Level 2, questions focus on the details of things your child knows but are not necessarily visible at the time of questioning. Your child may or may not be able to see the things you are asking about, and at Level 2 you are asking about things in more detail compared to Level 1.
Examples of Level 2 questions include:
- What happened?
- Who / what / where is ____? (remembering information)
- Describing characteristics of objects (e.g., size, shape, colour, taste, smell, feel)
- Which one do we use to ___? (identifying an object function)
- What do we use a ___ for? (describing an object by function)
- Tell me something that is a type of ____. (naming an object from a category)
- How are these different?
- Tell me two things that are ___ and ___. (attending to two characteristics)
Level 3: Reordering Perception
At Blanks Level 3, the questions are not about direct objects and answering requires your child to use their own knowledge and higher order thinking. To answer Level 3 questions, your child will need to make basic predictions, assume the role of another, or make generalizations.
Examples of Level 3 questions include:
- What will happen next? (prediction)
- What is a _____? (definition)
- How are these the same?
- Find one to use with this.
- Find the things that are not _____. (understanding negatives)
- What could she say? or How does she feel? (assuming the role of another).
- (In a given situation), what should I/we do? (problem-solving)
- What else can ___? What can we use instead of ___? (identifying an alternative)
- Tell me how to do it. (giving directions)
- Tell me the story. What happened when ___? (Describing pictures in a sequence or retelling an event that happened)
Level 4: Reasoning About Perception
At Blanks Level 4, the questions are not about direct objects, and answering requires your child to use reasoning and draw on past experiences. To answer Level 4 questions, your child will need to problem-solve, predict, and provide explanations.
Examples of Level 4 questions include:
- What will happen if? (prediction)
- Why did ____? (justifying cause of event)
- What could ____ do / use? (solution)
- Why could ____ do that / use that? (explaining means to goal)
- Why can’t we ____? (explaining an obstacle to a solution)
- How can we tell ____? (explaining observation)
- Why is ___ made of ___? (explaining construction of objects)
- Why is this called a motorbike / sunflower / bedroom? (explaining the logic of compound words)
- Why will / won’t ___ happen? (justifying a prediction)
- Why would / wouldn’t it? (justifying a decision)
Examples of Blank’s Levels in Everyday Situations
Below are some examples of questions at each of Blank’s Levels that you could ask your child during mealtime:
Level 1
- What’s this? (while holding up a plate)
- What’s that called? (while pointing to a bowl)
- What am I doing? (e.g., cutting, scooping, serving)
- Can you find me a spoon?
- Can you find another like this? (while pointing to a fork).
- Who has the salt?
Level 2
- Where is the bread?
- What is in the bowl?
- What colour is the soup?
- What do we use a napkin for?
- Tell me two things that are warm and we can drink.
Level 3
- What is a spoon / fork / cup? (definition).
- We have finished eating, what will happen next? (prediction)
- Uh-oh, I spilled pasta on the floor. What should I do next? (problem-solving)
- Find something you use with this (while pointing to a knife, child would then find a fork). (word associations)
- This is James’ favourite dinner. How does James feel? (assuming the role of another)
- Find me something that is not red. (understanding negatives)
- Can you tell me how to set the table (sequencing)
- Pass me the salt, then give James a spoon. (multi-step direction)
Level 4
- What would happen if we left our food on the floor? (consequence)
- Why can’t we put our milk on a plate? (negative + consequence)
- My toast is burnt. Why do you think it is burnt? (explanation)
- We’ve run out of ice cream for pudding, what could we do? (problem-solving)
- How can we tell the soup is hot?
If you would like more information about Blank’s Levels or receptive communication, please get in touch. Follow us on Facebook for more speech, language and feeding tips, and sign up for South Lakes Speech & Language Therapy’s newsletter if you would like new posts sent directly to your inbox.