Generating Self-Questions after Reading: A Comprehension Assist for Elementary Students

This study assessed the effects of post passage question generation on comprehension question performance for elementary school students. Fifty sixth-grade students were directed either to read and reread four expositor) passages or to generate two good “think”-type questions for each passage prior to a comprehension test. Findings from co-variance analyses revealed that the question-generation group exceeded the read-reread group on higher order inferential comprehension test items, but not on literal items. Moreover, no interactions were found between reading skill and the effects of the question-generation activity. Implications are drawn for future research and for the implementation of question-generation activities with elementary school students.