The Impact of Students’ Training in Questioning the Author Technique on EFL Reading Comprehension

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of student-generated questions on reading comprehension of EFL students. Ninety-eight adult students participated in this study. There were three experimental groups and one control group. The participants in the first experimental group read two unmodified reading passages and answered fifteen multiple-choice comprehension questions. These participants were asked to generate a number of questions based on the given texts and discuss them with a peer before answering the reading comprehension questions. Similarly, the participants in the second experimental group were asked to generate a number of questions and discuss them with a partner. However, they were trained in Questioning the Author technique (QtA).The participants in the third experimental group read the simplified version of the same passages and answered the same comprehension questions without generating any questions. Finally, the participants in the control group read the unmodified texts and answered the same comprehension questions individually without any support. The results revealed that the participants in all the experimental groups outperformed their peers in the control group. Nevertheless, the participants’ reading scores who had been trained in QtA were significantly higher than the scores of their peers in the other three groups. This indicates the value of training students in generating their own comprehension questions.