You May Only Ask Questions

Besides making it it harder to come up with things to say I think the main thing I learned was how asking a question was more audience-sensitive than making a statement. With a statement its a given that its your opinion and since you know everyone knows this you don't worry about it being universally relevant or understandable which is a big mistake. With questions you must be sure what you say will provoke a response otherwise its pointless. The one question I asked was too personal to be asked of the entire class who can't all answer, and it wasn't related enough to the topic of conversation to hold its own without any of my opinion. After this first failure I found that all the questions I had were just requests for clarification. They were too safe and not thought-provoking. What this taught me about un-restricted discussion was that I need to focus on direct responses or questions so my opinions aren't just floating un-connected in the middle of group discussion that should flow.