Chapter 13

Socratic Seminar Sentence Starters

Directions: During any Socratic seminar or discussion that we have in class, you are expected to use academic language when you speak. In turn, you also expected to apply good listening skills during the activity.

Please utilize the following sentence frames while you speak in order to incorporate strong academic language structures into your natural vocabulary and deepen the level of intellectual discussion in an academic setting.

Sentence Frames for Clarification:

_________________, could you please rephrase that?

I did not understand ____________________, could you repeat that, please?

I did not understand ___________, do you mean __________? (here you rephrase what you think the group member said and wait for clarification)

It’s not quite clear. Can you explain what you said about ________?

Can you say more about that?

In other words, are you saying _________?

I have a question about ________. State your question.

Sentence Frame for changing the subject:

I think we’ve exhausted the topic of ________, can we move on to ______?

Moving on to _________

Does anyone have any final comments to add about ______ or shall we move on to a new subject?

Sentence Frames for affirming an idea and adding to it:

My idea is related to ____________’s idea ___________.

I really liked ______’s idea about _________.

I agree with ______. Also, _________.

My idea builds on ______’s idea. I __________.

Presenting a different angle on a subject:

While I can see why you believe this, I see this differently. In my opinion _______.

I understand where you are coming from, but I see it a bit differently. From my perspective, _________.

That’s a valid point, but I feel __________.

On the other hand, __________.

I do agree with the part about _________ but __________.

Expressing your opinion:

I believe that _________.

In my opinion __________.

I feel that ___________.

I think that __________ because ________.

To me, it seems obvious that ________.