Here are some of the best questions for a high school junior student survey about writing and communication confidence, plus tips for crafting them. If you want to generate a tailored survey in seconds, Specific is built for this and more.
Open-ended questions: Unlocking honest insights
Open-ended questions are the gold standard for understanding how high school juniors actually feel about their writing and communication abilities. These questions help students share what’s working, what isn’t, and why—without boxing them into generic choices. Open-ended formats reveal obstacles, aspirations, and unexpected themes that multiple-choice can’t touch. That’s crucial, considering writing confidence drops by 5.03% from late elementary to middle school, and another 4.74% from middle to high school—meaning there’s a real need to understand where students struggle and thrive. [1]
What’s the one thing you wish you felt more confident about when writing assignments?
Describe a time when you felt really proud of your written work. What made it stand out?
What’s your biggest challenge when you have to present or speak in front of others?
How do you usually prepare for writing or communication tasks in class?
What kind of feedback from teachers or classmates helps you feel more confident?
Can you describe an example of when you felt unsure or stuck during a writing assignment?
How do you feel about group discussions or class participation? Why?
What would make you feel more comfortable sharing your ideas with others?
How have your writing or communication skills changed since you started high school?
If you could change one thing about how writing is taught, what would it be and why?
Letting students reflect in their own words surfaces what’s important to them, not just what you expect to hear.
Single-select multiple-choice: When structure is helpful
Sometimes the cleanest way to quantify high school juniors’ experiences is with single-select multiple-choice questions. These questions come in handy when you want quick stats, or when you know the answer set covers most student realities. They can spark conversations too—making it easier to get started before you dig deeper with open questions.
Question: How confident do you feel about your writing skills?
Very confident
Somewhat confident
Not very confident
Not confident at all
Question: What do you find most challenging about communication assignments?
Organizing my thoughts
Speaking in front of classmates
Writing under time pressure
Other
Question: Which type of feedback helps you improve most?
Written comments from teachers
Class discussions
Peer reviews
No feedback helps me
When to follow up with “why?” Following up with “why” uncovers the real reasons—sometimes surprising ones—behind an answer. If a student picks “not very confident,” you unlock actionable feedback by asking, “Why do you feel that way?” Use these follow-ups to turn surface-level data into deep, specific understanding.
When and why to add the “Other” choice? “Other” exists for the unexpected. If none of your choices fit, students can name their own challenge—like “English isn’t my first language”—and your AI-powered survey can then ask targeted follow-ups to get the story behind it. These insights can be powerful catalysts for new support strategies.
NPS—Does it make sense here?
NPS (Net Promoter Score) isn’t just for businesses. For schools, a well-phrased NPS question helps you gauge how likely high school juniors are to recommend their writing class—or even school-wide approaches to writing and communication—to others. Why bother? Because NPS is a quick gut-check of student satisfaction, and a flag for potential issues. You can build this instantly with Specific.
NPS questions often look like, “On a scale of 0–10, how likely are you to recommend our writing program to a friend?” Follow up with, “Why did you give that score?” to get context. Given that only 27% of middle and high school students are proficient in writing, this quick-and-deep combination is a smart move. [2]
The power of follow-up questions
Following up is where surveys jump from static forms to true conversations. If you haven’t explored automated follow-up questions, you’re missing out. With Specific, our AI analyzes every answer in real time and asks smart, on-the-fly follow-ups—just like an expert interviewer—pulling out extra detail without any manual back-and-forth.
Student: “I feel nervous speaking in class.”
AI follow-up: “What makes you feel nervous—do you worry about forgetting your words, or is it something else?”
Contrast this with a traditional survey where you might only get the first vague answer, leaving you to guess at root causes.
How many followups to ask? Most of the time, aiming for two or three follow-ups does the trick. That balance gets you context without overwhelming your audience. And you can always enable a setting—like in Specific—to skip ahead if the question has already been answered fully.
This makes it a conversational survey. It’s survey meets real conversation, not just a form to fill in and forget. Respondents actually open up when interaction feels personal and dynamic.
AI survey analysis made easy: Even if your survey collects pages of unstructured replies, you can analyze all the answers with AI instantly—no more sifting through hundreds of essays on your own.
These intelligent follow-ups are a new way to get beyond surface-level responses. Try creating a survey and see how different it feels to both ask and answer.
Prompting ChatGPT to create better questions
Want to use ChatGPT (or other AIs) to help brainstorm your high school junior writing and communication survey? That’s a smart move. It all starts with a simple prompt:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for High School Junior Student survey about Writing And Communication Confidence.
But context makes a huge difference. If you give GPT more information—like your goals, your situation, or your students’ unique needs—you get better results. Try:
I’m a high school teacher looking to understand how juniors feel about writing assignments and class presentations. Our goal is to increase student confidence and adapt our curriculum. Suggest 12 open-ended questions for this student survey.
After generating starter questions, push the AI to organize its ideas:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Ready to dig deeper? Pick a promising category—for example, “Barriers to Communication”—and continue your prompt:
Generate 10 questions for categories Barriers to Communication and Feedback Preferences.
Building surveys with AI isn’t just faster—it’s also more flexible and accurate when you iterate like this.
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey is a new kind of feedback tool—powered by AI—that feels like chatting with a smart interviewer. Instead of a one-way form (with static questions), the survey adapts and responds in real time:
It asks clarifying or follow-up questions based on the user’s actual answers
It uses a natural, friendly tone, encouraging honest responses
It’s chat-based, so respondents aren’t just filling in boxes—they’re participating in a conversation
This is a massive step up from manual survey creation. Here’s why:
Manual Survey Creation | AI-Generated Conversational Survey |
|---|---|
Requires hours of brainstorming, planning, and editing | Powered by AI—builds the survey in minutes from your prompt |
Static; every respondent gets the same Q&A path | Dynamically adapts questions in real time based on responses |
Follow-up must be planned and scripted ahead of time | Follow-up questions triggered by answers, naturally |
Harder to probe for more detail or clarify responses | AI probes for detail on the fly |
Why use AI for high school junior student surveys? Collecting honest feedback from teenagers takes more than a list of questions. AI survey examples adapt to each respondent, surface what really matters, and can even uncover patterns you’d miss manually. This is crucial given research showing that student self-efficacy (confidence) predicts actual writing performance: build trust and you’ll get real, actionable data. [5]
Specific’s AI survey builder has a best-in-class interface for conversational surveys. The process feels smooth for students and researchers alike, plus you can see how to create surveys step by step if you want a detailed walkthrough.
See this writing and communication confidence survey example now
Jump in and see how easy it is to build surveys that reveal what high school juniors really think about writing and communication. You’ll get better insights, quicker responses, and a process that finally feels human.