Questioning Text (Authority): Strengthening Reader Identity.

Posted by Iris Devadason on July 3, 2010

Questioning Text (Authority): Strengthening Reader Identity.

by

Iris Devadason.

At Post-Graduate level, Reading should not be a receptive skill but  should be as productive as writing is. Teachers  should provide  various aids to introduce the idea of reading as interaction between the reader and writer, a recognition of the writer’s voice.

Questioning  a text before  and while reading it is to many a new idea as students have always been questioned after reading a text where the emphasis is only on recall of content  and not on anticipation or “on making intelligent guesses”.

Why do I make much of this technique ?

Questions  are the prerogative of parents-teachers, doctors, counselors/pastors

and police personnel, lawyers  and judges .But readers too  need to ask: What is the author actually saying which is not just surface content?

Thus, Questioning text opens up new interpretations of thoughts and facts. It allows the reader to assume a new role as authority, a new identity as reader. Of course questioning as a method is not new and we all know of the Socratic method  which is about teaching by asking, instead of sheer telling .

Our graduate students are usually  passive, a kind of tabula rasa, waiting for the teacher to fill their  minds  with information. This is a cultural  trait more common in rural areas where  the teacher as ‘guru’, is a formidable figure whom one must not question. This attitude of respect and fear of the teacher is reflected in the way students avoid eye contact with the teacher. Such students have to be taught how to question a text. The idea is new to them. I now offer  a few of my  practical solutions to this problem.

1)    I cite Kipling’s poem ‘Six Serving Men’ to substantiate the idea of questioning being an important skill.

“I keep six

honest serving men,

They taught me all I knew.

Their names are

What, why and when

How, where and who.”  [Rudyard Kipling ]

I then give out copies of a simple text to read, normally taken from  a magazine.  I encourage them to start with basic questions of Literal comprehension those beginning with the Wh-words: What, Who, Which, When, Where  and also How and Why, though these are deeper questions.

Students wonder how they are to ask questions if they have not read the text and so I help them with obvious  pre-reading questions like, ‘Who wrote this Article ?,’ ‘When was it published ?’, ‘What does the author say of—-? actually activating latent  knowledge.

The fact that they do not have to answer these questions but just frame them is a new idea which they have to accept and practise for their future study.

2) Classroom work: This is followed by practice with skim and scan type reading, asking all the Wh-questions . For the weaker students I re-teach the structure of the question in English as our students often make statements and then add ‘Yes?’  or ‘No?’  or by voice inflection convey their query. I also point out that questions may begin with prepositions as in the following examples, ‘ In what way ..?’   ‘ From where  did ….?’, ‘To which person….?’To practice this skill I ask questions such as:

‘When did Holi/ Id/ Christmas fall last year?’ and ask what question is implied in it.

Answer: On which date did we celebrate  Holi/Id/Christmas?

I allow ten such samples going around the class to ensure that all have understood the power of questions and their structure too. This takes about two hours to teach and home work is given to reinforce learning.

But I do keep the WHY and HOW questions till later as they are deeper questions.

The underlying rationale is that all students have experience of life but they are unaware of what they do know. The teacher helps them to bring out latent knowledge in them and helps them to bring this into play while decoding unfamiliar text. They are forced to be active participants and thus shed their earlier passiveness due to cultural inhibitions and dominating teachers!

3) I now introduce to students sophisticated tools of questioning  based on Barret’s Taxonomy, which is   itself based on or related to Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational  Objectives.

These are:

Question types                                            Bloom’s Objectives

1. 1. Qs. Of Literal comprehension                               Knowledge
2. 2. Qs of Personal response                                        Comprehension
3. 3. Qs of Re-interpretation /reorganization                Application
4. 4. Qs of Inference                                                     Analysis
5. 5. Qs of Style                                                             Synthesis
6. 6. Qs of Evaluation                                                    Evaluation

This requires a lot of practice. I allow homework which is not graded but corrected and discussed . Grades are awarded only when they have mastered the technique .

These question types are related to different levels of learning. The first two levels are acceptable for high school or pre-university students but  for PG students  the others are more useful as they foster  good readers and  critical thinkers. Making connections with real-life scenarios by inferencing and predicting  too has to be encouraged in such students.

Asking questions is thus a way of instilling confidence in students who have never been permitted to think for themselves and  be critical. It  turns diffident students into bright  scholars who interact with learning materials with high returns. Both socially and academically, asking questions is a very useful tool and I heartily recommend it to other teachers. ©

Questioning Text (Authority): Strengthening Reader Identity.

by

Iris Devadason.

( only 893 words now)