Text-Dependent Questions: Reflecting and Transcending the Text

Abstract

Posing text‐dependent questions is crucial for facilitating students' comprehension of the text. However, text‐dependent questions should not merely ask students to reflect the author's literal or even inferential meaning. The author's message is the starting place for comprehension, rather than the end goal or object of comprehension. The text itself should be a tool for greater engagement with the ideas the author presents. Readers transcend the text when they question, challenge, and evaluate the veracity of the author's message. Importantly, they relate the text to their lives and use it to take action in solving problems in their world. This manuscript presents suggestions and considerations for asking text‐dependent questions that both reflect and transcend the text.

Reading Literacy Practices in Norwegian Lower-Secondary Classrooms: Examining the Patterns of Teacher Questions

“…Analysis in the present study revealed that 62.5 percent of the questions that teachers asked were text-dependent, meaning that 37.5 percent of the questions focused on text-related issues going beyond the form and content of texts. Even though a primary goal is to support students to understand and reflect on texts by engaging them in the textual form and content-by asking text-dependent questions-it is also important to enable students to connect the texts to relevant knowledge and their own experiences for the overall process of meaning-making (Boelé, 2016). Both of these aspects were included in the questions related to constructing textual meaning in the participating classrooms, providing the students with opportunities to engage in texts from several entryways in the endeavor of developing their overall textual comprehension skills.…”

“…A greater focus on this issue is especially critical when engaging non-fiction texts in today's digital environment, as students encounter a diverse and complex textual landscape on a daily basis. They thus need strategies for discerning the accuracy of the author's message (Boelé, 2016). Moreover, the way of reading displayed in this study seems to socialize students into what Macken-Horarik (1998) called mainstream literacy: developing reading skills to be able to actively take part in a text culture, and focusing less on developing critical literacy by highlighting resistance toward the author's viewpoint, which may enable students to challenge the way a textual content is presented (Blikstad-Balas, 2016;Macken-Horarik, 1998).…”