Types of Questions to Foster

Text Comprehension
Pearson and Johnson (1972) articulate three types of questions that can be used
with text to support students’ thinking and understanding of the content of the text.
They note that questions cannot be classified by simply examining the wording of a
question; the cognitive challenge and comprehension focus can only be classified by
examining both the question and the text students must process in order to respond.
They call this the question-answer relationship. They distinguish between textually
explicit, textually implicit, and scriptally implicit questions.

Textually Explicit Questions (TE)

Textually explicit questions are questions whose answers are right there in the text,
“some would call them factual recall questions” (Johnson & Pearson, 1972, p. 157).
There is a right or wrong answer to these questions that can be found explicitly in
the words in the text.

Textually Implicit Questions (TI)

Textually implicit questions are questions that require the reader to make inferences
based on information in the text—to fill in gaps in the text that the author doesn’t
explicitly state. These questions cannot be answered without the text, but they also
cannot be answered by using exact words from the text. They require readers to
think about what the author has stated explicitly, what the author has hinted at or
implied, as well as what readers may know from their background knowledge to
make inferences Some textually implicit questions are quite “local” (can be answered
by reading just a sentence or two) but others require readers to read greater
amounts of text—to select evidence from multiple places in the text—to make their
inferences. These are usually more difficult textually-implicit questions than “local”
textually-implicit questions.

Scriptally Implicit Questions (SI)

Script refers to a person’s schema or background knowledge– what they know from
their life experiences or prior learning. Scriptally implicit questions require readers to
use information outside the passage. A student may be able to comprehend a
particular passage quite competently—at the literal, inferential, or analytic levels—
but if the question requires knowledge that is not in the passage, then the same
student may struggle. On the other hand, a question related to a passage that can
be answered without reading the text, is not a good indicator of a student’s ability to
read with comprehension.
Pearson and Johnson (1972) provide us with this example of the three types of
questions in relation to a short text segment.
College of Education, University of Washington
Box 353600 Seattle, WA 98195-3600
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 Will Wends His Way

Right after the Civil War, many distraught soldiers made their way West to find fame
and fortune. Some could not go home because there were no homes to go to. The
war had devastated them. One young man, Will Goodlad, made his fortune in the
hills of Colorado. He found gold in a little river near Grand Junction. His fortune was
short lived, however. In 1875, he declared bankruptcy and returned to the land of his
birth- the Piedmont of South Carolina.

Textually Explicit (TE) Question-Response:

Q: How did Will Goodlad make his fortune?
R: In the hills of Colorado
* Notice that although this is a correct answer drawn directly from the words in a
single sentence, a teacher would want to prompt beyond this by asking about how
people make their fortunes from hills. This would push the cognitive challenge
further and require some inferencing (textually implicit question).

Q: What was short lived?

R: Will’s fortune
* Notice that the answer for this question is in the same sentence as the words in the
question. However, also notice that the sentence says, His fortune, which requires
students to make a connection (inference) that his refers to Will. This makes the
question more difficult but still fairly explicit.

Textually Implicit (TI) Question-Response:

Q: According to the text, what problem did many soldiers face after the Civil War?
A: They were upset (distraught) and searching for a way to have success (fame and
fortune). Many also couldn’t go home because their homes had been destroyed by
the battles of the war.
* Notice that students could provide several answers to this question but that each of
them requires inference between sentences and understanding of specific
vocabulary words (e.g. distraught, devastated) in the context of the passage.

Scriptally Implicit (SI) Question-Response:

Q: For what side did Will fight during the War?
R: The South
* Notice that students must do a fair amount of inferencing to answer this question.
It never directly mentions the side Will was on. But, it does say that he returned to
the land of his birth- the Piedmont of South Carolina. So, readers must first infer that
the place he was born has something to do with his side in the war. But, that isn’t
enough—they must use their own background knowledge to conclude that South
Carolina was part of the South during the Civil War. So this question involves both
textually-implicit and scriptally-implicit comprehension.

College of Education, University of Washington

Box 353600 Seattle, WA 98195-3600
coe@[Link]
 Other Types of Questions:

In addition to asking questions that help students dig into the content of the text,
teachers often pose questions to help students focus on text features, genre
features, and their own reading processes. These questions are often identified in
the text mapping/analysis stage as teachers identify potentially important or
challenging aspects of the text and they also emerge during the discussion. The
following are examples of these types of questions:
1. Why do you think the author placed the words “hunk of dirt” in italics?
2. What we already know about fairy tales that might be important in this story?
3. What do you notice about the titles of these chapters?
4. What hints in the text helped you know this was a flashback?

Developing Questions to Foster Comprehension and Discussion

Asking students a variety of types of questions and scaffolding their thinking through
prompting, coaching, and demonstrating are essential to helping students build
comprehension. But all questions are not equally valuable in helping students
develop deep understanding of text. Good questions help students develop a
coherent understanding of a text—an understanding of what the big ideas and
concepts mean rather than thinking of comprehension as a collection of discrete
details and interesting facts. This is not to say that details and facts are unimportant,
but more to say that they are best understood when viewed in the context of
understanding the central ideas in a text. This is why we recommend that teachers
carefully analyze the text they will use in preparing their lessons (see text
mapping/analysis in Before Reading tool). The analysis helps teachers determine a
coherent set of questions they can use to guide students in developing
understanding of a text, anticipate challenges in the text that need more attention,
and it leads directly to establishing content goals for reading a particular text.
For example, in The Little Red Hen teachers might be inclined to ask questions
around sequence, specifically the order in which the hen asks the animals for help or
about the steps in making bread. However, in understanding the story, the sequence
of the animals nor the steps in making bread are not the most important ideas. More
important is that the hen asks many different animals to help with various steps in
farming wheat to make bread and none will help her. Ultimately she decides not to
share her bread with them because they were unwilling to help her with the hard
work.

College of Education, University of Washington

Box 353600 Seattle, WA 98195-3600
coe@[Link]
 More than just asking a variety of question types, it is important for teachers to ask
valuable questions strategically—at appropriate spots in the text and about important
content—that will support children in constructing a coherent understanding of the
text or help them understand challenging sections. And, more important than
students’ responses to questions, is their thinking about the ideas in the text and
their ability to draw inferences and read critically. Teachers need to support and to
engage students in explaining their thinking during text discussions; they need to
help students make their thinking visible to themselves, their peers, and the teacher
(see below).

Chunking Text for Text Discussions

Because our tool involves teacher-mediated comprehension—teachers working

directly with students during the read of a text—and because authentic reading
experiences for intermediate-grade students often involve longer, more complex
reading selections, we suggest “chunking” the text into multiple smaller sections to
facilitate student understanding and learning. Rather than having students read an
entire selection and then discussing– chunking the text allows for in the moment and
more in-depth discussion and scaffolding of both the content and reading processes
used to construct meaning. The chunks are determined by teachers during analysis
of the text (see Text Mapping/Analysis in Before Reading tool) and are adjusted
during the lesson as the need arises. In general, the chunks are meaningful
sections of texts—not too long and not too short—that help students dig into the
important ideas and tackle challenging sections along the way.

Teacher Explanations During Reading

In addition to mediating comprehension during reading through questions and

discussion, teachers can help students develop comprehension of the text by
highlighting, modeling, or cueing students to features that may be confusing or new
for them. This should happen naturally as part of reading the text for specific
purposes—it is not a time to interrupt the flow to teach an isolated lesson. For
example, the teacher may:
o Briefly explain a challenging vocabulary term or phrases in the context of the
particular sentence/text.
o Point out how to use text features (timelines, graphics) to understand the
content.
o Point out or explain language cues such as particular words (however, unlike)
or figures of speech or dialect
o Help students make connections to other texts or fill in background knowledge
students may not have but need to understand.

College of Education, University of Washington

Box 353600 Seattle, WA 98195-3600
coe@[Link]
 Discussion Talk Moves

Talk moves can explicitly be taught to students to support them in having productive
discussions with their peers. Using talk moves furthers the conversation and creates
a space for other ideas and thoughts to be shared with the group. Talk moves allow
a teacher to facilitate a discussion around a rich question that connects to the
content or reading process objectives in the lesson. The following table illustrates
five productive talk moves (Chapin, O’Connor, & Anderson, 2009), phrases students
can be taught in using the moves (Nichols, 2006) and questions teachers can ask to
push student thinking and the discussion (Dorn, 2005).

College of Education, University of Washington

Box 353600 Seattle, WA 98195-3600
coe@[Link]