“My [Questioning the Author] sessions with the pupils were enjoyable and satisfying and it made me want to carry out more QtA sessions with them. The pupils were enthusiastic and responsive. In essence, QtA made my pupils think.”
How Questioning the Author (QtA) Can Help Your StudentsQtA complements the existing English language curriculum by incorporating open-ended discussion with questioning strategies to build on students’ understanding of the reading text
Why Questioning the Author?To enable students to become independent, thoughtful readers, Questioning the Author (Beck, McKeown, Sandora, Kucan & Worthy, 1996; Beck & McKeown , 2006) encourages the use of open-ended discussions with strategies to probe meanings in text passages. It promotes the notion of teacher and students discovering meanings of text together through query-driven discussions.
QtA has been introduced to students and teachers of a mainstream primary school, where participating students showed improvement in overall reading comprehension tests over a three-year period. Teachers also found that QtA aided students in comprehending vocabulary and understanding the ideas in reading passages.
How Does it Work?Questioning the Author provides a framework for leading reading comprehension discussion. A key feature is to help students understand that a text is a collection of ideas written by a fallible author; therefore, the text may be ambiguous or incomplete. In this way, QtA makes texts less intimidating to students and encourages students to think critically while they read.
A QtA lesson involves teachers using initiating and follow-up queries to build learners’ understanding of a text during reading. The query-based discussion helps students learn to explore and probe the meanings of texts. This trains their overall comprehension skills and facilitates their development as independent readers.
Evidence From Research
How Did Students Respond?Students who participated for three years along with teachers who participated for three years showed significant gains.
How Did Teachers Respond?
As teachers developed expertise, they were able to use QtA in teaching other subjects (e.g. Social Studies).
How Can Teachers Get Started?When reading the text in class, the initiating and follow-up queries may be used to facilitate class discussion. The goal is to guide the students’ thinking and scaffold students’ construction of meaning around the text.
Managing discussions in a QtA lesson
Follow-up moves help teachers manage classroom interactions during reading comprehension lessons. These moves serve to probe student understanding and highlight crucial information in the text.
Highlighting students’ comments or ideas
Directing or redirecting students’ attention to text or to another student’s comment or question
Reformulating or restating students’ discussion
Demonstrating to students how to pose questions
Filling in gaps or addressing students’ misconceptions with appropriate information
Summarizing the main points of the text or discussion
For additional details and materials, view our Classroom Resources.
Additional information can also be found in Beck & McKeown (2006).
Related links
Further ReadingsThe following NIE projects are associated with Questioning the Author research:
Research TeamFor more information about this research, please contact the Principal Investigator A/P Rita SILVER at rita.silver@nie.edu.sg.
Principal Investigator
A/P Rita Elaine SILVER, English Language and Literature (ELL), NIE
Co-Principal Investigator
Dr PNG Lay Hoon, Jessie, ELL, NIE
Research Associates
Acknowledgements
This research on Questioning the Author was funded by Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) under the Education Research Funding Programme (OER 29/08 RS, OER 09/10 RS & OER 40/12 RS) and administered by National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Singapore MOE and NIE.
This knowledge resource was written by Ms Lyndia Teow and Ms Tan Minying in June 2017; updated by Ms Monica Lim and Jared Martens Wong on 11 January 2022.
