Unit 5: Strategies for Answering and Fielding Questions We discuss strategies to ensure that our answers not only satisfy the questioner who has presented us with a question, but also provide the rest of the audience with the appropriate information to gain maximum benefit from the Q&A portion of a scientific seminar. We look at ways to confirm question meanings, to provide appropriate background information, ways to defend our ideas, and also at ways to admit that we can’t answer a question or need more time to do so. These are features that are often missing from students’ answers. In class, students make short speeches on a familiar scientific topic and then field questions asked of them by their classmates. Students will have ample opportunity to apply in a practical way the skills covered in the previous topics of summarizing/paraphrasing and asking questions. This topic is also two weeks.