The Effects of Embedded Questions and Elaborative Interrogation on Korean EFL Students' Reading Comprehension

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of two different types of reading questions, embedded questions (‘what’ questions) and elaborative interrogation (‘why’ questions), on two levels of L2 reading comprehension, which included factual understanding and high order thinking. Three groups of Korean EFL high school were each given a narrative passage with no question, embedded questions and elaborative interrogation. After reading a passage with or without questions, a recall test was completed in order to measure the students factual understanding. The were also asked to write an essay in order to evaluate the students’ high order thinking process. The recall data were coded and analyzed by idea units and the essays were investigated in terms of quantity and quality. As a result, there was a significant difference in both the quantity and quality of essay writing among groups while no significance was shown in the result of the recall test.