Improving teachers’ questioning in teaching of reading texts in Chinese based on using the six types of reading comprehension processes

Abstract

Questioning is one of the important elements in the teacher talk, but ironically, there is insufficient evidence to prove that the questions gain much effectiveness. Using the ‘Six Types of Reading Comprehension Processes’, we are interested to find out if teachers asked more questions that are of higher-order thinking, i.e., summarizing, elaborating, evaluating and creating than low-order thinking like retrieving and explaining, would enhance the reading performance of the students. Five secondary schools in Hong Kong participated in this experiment which included a professional development seminar on improving questioning technique in teaching of reading using the six types of reading comprehension processes. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected through lesson observations, reading pre-test & post-test, teacher & student interviews, and teacher & students survey. Through this experimentation, we found that: (1) Teachers asked more higher-order thinking questions and increased in the wait time given to the students, but the total number of questions asked in class remains high; (2) Students like higher-order thinking questions as they find them challenging and giving them the flexibility and space to provide different answers; (3) When there is a change in the teachers’ questioning technique, the students are able to detect it, and they are more enthusiastic in answering the questions, as compared to their counterparts in the control group; (4) In the reading post-test, the total score and sub-score of the higher-order thinking questions of the experimental group is significantly higher than the control group. 課堂提問是閱讀課上最重要的教學行為之一，然而提問效果卻一直難 如人意。對其中的一些關鍵問題，如提高問題的認知層次可否改進學 生的閱讀表現，在學術界未取得一致的看法。六層次閱讀能力系統把 閱讀分為複述、解釋、重整、伸展、評價和創意六個能力，前兩個為 低層次能力，後四個屬於高層次能力。以此六層次系統為基礎，本研 究在香港五所中學五個班級開展教學實驗，以運用六層次閱讀能力系 統為基礎改進中學閱讀課堂提問。通過課堂觀察、閱讀測試、師生訪 談及調查等形式取得定量與定性數據，分析顯示﹕（1）教師可提高問 題認知層次、增加候答時間，但在減少提問數量方面則未如預期；（2） 學生喜歡高認知層次問題，有思考空間是他們經常回答問題的重要原 因之一；（3）學生能察覺到課堂提問的變化，與對照組相比，他們對 提問更有興趣、更踴躍發言；（4）學生閱讀總分及部分高認知試題得 分較對照班有顯著提高。對於視作進展性評估的提問，教師可持之以 恆地反思與改進。本文提出進一步改進提問的建議。