understand the world around them and the text they read. Readers can ask questions to clarify, make connections, conduct research or summarize.
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- Question generation leads students to active reading and processing. - When using question generation strategy, students will actively engage
with the text to find important ideas. In addition, students should synthesize the text and integrate their own background knowledge to the
information being read. Moreover, questioning help readers to engage especially in reading a difficult or uninteresting material. Generating
question help them focus on reading and can help them to actively control their learning.
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- Question generation helps students set their own purposes for reading. Students should be an active reader to be able to find the important ideas
and turn the important ideas into questions. They are able to set their own purposes for reading by asking questions and seeking answers while
reading.
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Based on Kelley and Grace, question answering and question generating give students a purpose for their reading, encourage
comprehension monitoring, and assist them in connecting the new information with the concept that they already had.
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- Question generation increases students’ awareness of whether or not they
comprehend what they are reading. Clarifying questions ask who, what, why, when, and where. They help the
reader understand elements of plot, character, and setting. Clarifying questions may indicate that a reader needs more support in order to clear
up confusion. Answers to clarifying questions are usually found in the text quickly and easily.
45
Michelle J. Kelley and Nicki Clausen-Grace, Comprehension Shouldn’t Be Silent; from
Strategy Instruction to Student Independence, Newark, International Reading Assossiation, 2013, p. 157.
46
Chris Tovani, op. cit., p. 85.
47
Sharon M. Look, op. cit., pp. 11 —12.
48
Michelle J. Kelley and Nicki Clausen-Grace, op. cit., p. 158.
C. Steps to Apply Question Generation Strategy in Learning Reading
Narrative Text
Generally, question generation divests the readers to generate question whether before, during, or after reading. But, as stated above that the researcher
tends to limit the students to generate questions only during the reading process because the researcher wants to ensure that the students have a well
comprehension about the text. Therefore, these are the steps to apply question generation strategy, as follow:
a. Teacher firstly explain about question generation strategy, includes: - The concept of question generation strategy in reading narrative text
- The purposes of question generation strategy - When and how to use the strategy steps of the strategy in reading
narrative text - Some pre-requisite skill that the students need to have, such as;
generatingcreating WH-Questions
and finding
some important
information in narrative text, such as; main idea of the narrative story, detailed information of the narrative story, and the elements of the
narrative story. b. Next, students read the narrative text silently.
c. During their reading process, the students have to find the important information in the text.
d. After that, they have to turn the important idea into a question. The questions are in the form of WH-questions What, Where, When, Why, Who, and
How. e. The last, they need to answer the question based on the information on the
narrative text they read. When the students are able to answer all the questions that they made by
themselves, teacher can check the students’ reading comprehension by asking
them to tell what the text is all about to check if the students understand the text they read or not.
D. Previous Study
The previous study “The effects of question generating strategy instruction on EFL freshmen’s reading comprehension and use of English tenses” conducted
by Dentisak Dorkchandra aims to find out whether the instruction of a question generation s
trategy facilitate university EFL freshmen’s to enhance reading comprehension and their ability to use English tenses. The data collection tools
used was pre-and post-test conducted to 20 students in control group and 20 students in experimental group. The results in this study show that question-
generating strategy instruction can significantly improve the Thai university freshmen students’ reading comprehension and use of English tenses.
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The second previous study was “The Effect of Question-Generation S
trategy on Iranian EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension Development” conducted by Ali Akbar Khansir and Jamshid Gholami Dashti, aims to investigate
the effectiveness of question-generation strategy on Iranian EFL third grade high school students’ ability in reading comprehension passages via multiple-choice
question. In this study, the participants were one hundred and twenty male and female students. To collect data, proficiency test, pre-test and post-test were
administered in this study. The result of the study showed that question-generation strategy had significantly impact on the Iranian EFL third grade high school
learners’ in reading comprehension passages.
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The third previous study is “Effects of Question-Generation Training on Reading Comprehension
” conducted by Beth Davey and Susan McBride, aims to explore the effects of training question generation on comprehension question
performance, quality and form of generated questions, and accuracy of predicted comprehension. The sample is 260 sixth grade students which are placed in 1 of 5
experimental groups: question training, question-generation practice, inference question-response practice, literal question-response practice, and no-question
control. The result indicates that students who are trained to generate questions for
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Dentisak Dorkchandra, op. cit., pp. 32 —45.
50
Ali Akbar Khansir Jamshid Gholami Dashti, op. cit. pp. 38 —45.
