A Game of Twenty Questions

As mentioned in previous posts (here, here and here), I have been taking the edX Academic and Business Writing course with Berkeley. In week four of the course, we were introduced to the idea of using the game of twenty questions to interrogate our own ideas. There was a list of questions provided on the course which was quite useful:

1. What is your full name? Do some people know you by a different name?
2. How does the dictionary or encyclopaedia define you?
3. When were you born? What were the circumstances?
4. Are you still alive? If not, how did you come to an end?
5. What group do you belong to? How are you like others in your group?
6. Can you be divided into parts? How?
7. Were you different in the past? How?
8. Will you be different in the future? How?
9. Do you ever feel misunderstood?
10. What is your purpose?
11. What are you similar to? Why do you say that?
12. What are you different from? Why do you say that?
13. What or whom are you better than? In what ways?
14. What or whom are you inferior to? In what ways?
15. When people talk about you, what do they say?
16. Should I know any facts or statistics about you?
17. Is there someone I should talk to about you--an expert, for example?
18. Are there any famous sayings or quotes about you?
19. Have there been any stories about you in the news?
20. Should I do more research about you?

Again, this is a clever technique that helps us to start thinking about our subject in different ways. Like the other tools I have written about from the course, this too will help us to view what we are exploring from new angles.

I like it.


Sam

• Reference: Sokolik, M. (2017). Academic and Business Writing. Retrieved to August 2017 from https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:BerkeleyX+ColWri2.2x+2T2017/course/