After giving an academic talk, there is usually a question period. At a conference, it can be as short as 10 minutes. At a departmental talk, it can be as long as 30 minutes. Many people, including both graduate students and faculty, find this period stressful and difficult. In this blog post, I outline some strategies for managing the question period successfully.
1. Practice makes perfect. The most important thing to realize is that answering questions is a skill (going beyond the knowledge you have of the topic), and that you can work on it. The more you give presentations at conferences and smaller workshops, and at invited talks and in the department, the better and more confident you will get. Just keep working on the skill!
2. If somebody asks a difficult question during the question period, and you do not know the answer, say “Thank you very much. I will have to think about that.”
There is no shame in not knowing how to answer a question. Just be respectful and polite toward the person who asked the question. You might even want to bend down and write some notes on the handout, to show that you are taking the question seriously.
3. If somebody asks a complicated multi-part question (difficult to understand and remember), say “Please, which part should I answer first? Could you break it down a bit?” The questioner will have to repeat their question in a simplified form. This process will allow you to focus on a single question.
4. If somebody asks a long complicated question outlining a complex data paradigm from a language that you are unfamiliar with, just thank the questioner, and say “That is really interesting, can you send me the data by e-mail so I can look at it more closely.”
Syntacticians are often deeply immersed in very complicated data from their favorite language, and they honestly do not understand how difficult it is for other people understand it. So without any thought, they will launch into a long tirade on some set of data, expecting you to comment on it. There is no way that you can do a decent analysis of that data (or even understand it) under the hot lights of a conference room, with 30 people looking on, and very limited time, so don’t even try. Just get the person to agree to correspond with you after the talk, and move on.
5. One of the most powerful tools is to turn the question on the questioner.
This allows you to understand the question more, and gives you time to sort out a response. For example, suppose the question is:
Q: Can that phenomenon be handled with logophoricity?
You can then ask:
Q’: How would that work exactly? Can you please elaborate a bit?
Or you could ask:
Q’’: Why do you think logophoricity is relevant here?
There are lots and lots of such follow up questions. By asking them, you get clarification and a bit more time to answer. Once you get the hang of this, it is a very powerful tool. And it does not make you look weak. Rather it makes you look confident.
6. You may not be able to answer a question, but you may have interesting related ideas that you can speak confidently about. So you can deflect the question a tiny bit with a comment like, “I have not explored that yet, but a closely related issue is…” or “That issue is related to another that I have been thinking about…”.
7. Plant possible questions during the talk.
There are certain parts of your research that you will not have time to present in the talk. You could plant little flags here and there in the talk, encouraging people to ask questions in the question period. For example, you could say during the talk:
“If anybody wants to hear what happens with reflexives, I could address that during the question period.”
This will prime the audience to ask questions which you have already prepared for.
8. Think ahead of time about possible questions and answers.
You have been working on the material for a while. That is why you are giving a talk. What kinds of questions have come up before in talking with your advisor and your colleagues. You can even write down some of the most common ones, and plan out your answers to these questions. In other words, just like you give a practice talk to prepare, you can also entertain possible questions and answers ahead of time. In fact, if you give a practice talk to some linguist friends, you can have them ask a few questions just to get you going.
9. If you have the option, take minor clarificational questions during the talk, but all other questions should be reserved for the question period following the talk.
There is nothing worse than an over-zealous faculty member dominating your talk with questions concerning their own research program and how it relates to the talk you are giving. On many occasions, I have seen a question period talked ruined by this kind of person. This happens much more frequently than people are willing to acknowledge.
10. Often times, one person will insist on asking a lot of questions, taking up all the time in the question session. They ask a question, you answer it, then they ask a follow up, as if the whole question session were a discussion between the two of you. Just say the following: “Please, let’s talk later after the talk. I would like to give a few other people a chance to ask questions.” If you are polite and professional, nobody will take this as being rude (not even the questioner themselves).
11. It can also help to keep in mind why the question period is important to you, the researcher.
Here are some reasons: First, the questions asked at a talk can often give you important tips on how to deepen your analysis, bringing to light: further predictions, interesting examples, related generalizations about other languages, and important references. Second, sometimes after a talk you can strike up a great discussion with the question asker. This correspondence can lead in all kinds of interesting directions. Third, the question period is an additional way to help clarify your positions by going into the topic a little more deeply than was possible in the talk itself.
So if you can learn to manage the question period successfully, it can be a great way to further your research objectives.
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