PRETEST – READING FOR GENERAL COMMUNICATION

The excerpts in the following paragraphs are adopted from:

Reading is Our Business (Sharon Grimes, 2006) p. 42

Read the text in the paragraphs below and answer the following questions
briefly but clearly. Then, post your answers in this Google Classroom.

Paragraph-1

My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish
mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: So? Did you learn anything
today? But not my mother. ―Izzy,‖ she would say, ―did you ask a good question
today?‖ That difference—asking good questions—made me become a scientist.
Isidor Isaac Rabi, ―Great Minds Start with Questions‖

Questions:
1. What is meant by the first sentence in Paragraph-1?
2. How is Izzy different from the other mothers?
3. Where does the writer (author) live?
4. What moral value do you learn from this paragraph?
5. What would you do to your little brother/sister who like asking questions?

Paragraph-2

Even before I introduce questioning as a strategy, I can look out at my audience

and pick the students for whom questioning will become their favorite strategy:
my logical and analytical thinkers—those children filled to the brim with whys—
our future scientists, engineers, philosophers, mechanics, and computer
analysts. But first I know that with students in second grade and above I need to
overcome resistance. My better readers will be hesitant to reveal their
questions; they think they are supposed to have all of the answers. My below-
grade-level readers wouldn’t be caught dead asking questions, because they
are very much afraid it will open them up to ridicule. Building a community of
readers and thinkers must begin by dispelling the myth that good readers have
all the answers; the reality, I tell them, is just the opposite: good readers have all
the questions.

Questions:
6. What is the author’s profession? How do you know?
7. According to the author, what will the students who like asking questions
become?
8. Why do some readers dislike asking questions?
9. What do most people think good readers are?
10. What does the author think good readers are?
Paragraph-3

Research on proficient readers shows that good readers ask questions before,
during, and long after reading. Decades of research clearly demonstrate the link
between students’ abilities to generate questions and increases in
comprehension. Teaching children to ask questions as they read, the National
Reading Panel reveals, results in independent, active readers. ―By generating
and trying to answer them [questions], the reader processes the text more
actively‖ (NICHD 2000); as a result, comprehension increases. Children need to
be shown how good readers question the text as they are reading, and who
better to show them than librarians? Very few professions know more about the
art of questioning than librarians.

Questions:

11. What should teachers do to help students become proficient readers?

12. Why is it necessary to teach students to ask questions?
13. Who knows best the art of questioning? Why do you think so?

Paragraph-4

The scientific evidence for the efficacy of asking questions in comprehension

was so strong that the panel recommended explicit instruction in self-
questioning. The panel also suggested that question generation is best used as
a part of a multiple-strategy instruction program. Despite the body of research
supporting the benefits of student-generated questions, the paucity of student-
generated questions Dillon (1988) noted more than a decade ago continues in
classrooms today (Nist and Simpson 2000; Pressley 2000). Students spend far
more time answering the generic ―5 Ws and an H‖ questions than they do trying
to understand what they are reading: When do the events happen? Where does
the story take place? Who is the story about? What is the problem? Why did this
happen? How is the problem solved?

Questions:

14. What do you think the word panel in the first sentence means?
15. What conclusion can you make from the underlined sentence?