Students are told to look at the conversation in Scene 5 in terms of questions and answers.  They are to note the times Beckmann asks questions and gets an answer, as opposed to the times when Beckmann asks questions and is asked a question in return.

     After establishing by example that the question / question pattern occurs frequently, the teacher can ask students what it usually means when people answer questions with a question. Students can reflect in English or German about how counter-questions enable someone to avoid giving answers.  They will probably recognize counter-questions as ploys to dominate a conversation by directing it on the interviewees' terms rather than by responding to interviewers' attempts to obtain information from them.

     The teacher would model such a discourses and ask the class to practice this discursive technique either in German in order to experience its affective impact and prepare to act out the Beckmann / Kramer exchange.  Typical mini-discourses between students (often using particles to mark changes in emphasis within sentences):

Wie alt bist du? / Wie alt bist denn du?
Was hast du Freitag abend vor? / Was hast denn du vor?
usw.

     After that, they can be asked to read part of the Beckmann exchanges out loud, with the correct intonation (with one sentence countering the other).