The importance of questioning in reading.

Questioning is one way to figure out the comprehension process of the readers.
The process of questioning is a way to help the students have a better understanding of the
literature meanings and help themselves improve the experiences in reading. Questioning also
helps improve the learners’ critical thinking skills.
Questioning before reading is often done in order to activate the learners’ prior knowledge, to
make different predictions about the learner and wonder about the big different ideas which does
not consist the answers in the text.

Some questioning strategies that are used before reading are-

Know Want Learn (KWL) - Here the learners have to well-organize their necessary information
using a chart of three columns.
K- What I know about this topic
W- What do I want to know from this reading?
L- What knowledge did I receive throughout this reading?

Scaffolded Reading Experience (SRE) – This uses the questions of the teachers as the base
for the engagement of pre-reading of the learners with the text.
For Example, the learner may preview the reading text and then may discuss the main
vocabulary or simply just chunk the given text and then continue reading and discussing.

Reciprocal Reading- Here all learners who are working in groups that are small are each
given a role before they begin reading.

Directed Reading Activity (DRA) - The Directed Reading Activity uses the instructors’
questions in order to create interest, develop different purposes for reading and activate learners’
prior knowledge.

During the process of reading, the learners’ form different questions to

generalize and compare, clarify the meaning and identify the themes. Questioning while reading
helps the readers to review what has happened and clarify it, create and confirm new predictions,
make personal connections and critically evaluate the text, compare them with other reading and
experiences.
A few strategies for questioning while reading are, discussion webs, learning logs,
questioning the author and think-aloud (For example, Do I understand what I just read? What
more can I do to understand this? etc.). In questioning after reading, the learners use questioning
to remember characters and events, locate information and identify the exact theme. Some
questioning strategies that can be used after reading are, journal writing (for example, the
learners can write a journal from a point of view of a personified character), questioning the
author, teacher questions (For example, what did you understand from the text?) and ORQ
(Observe, Ruminate, Question)