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Teachers know that before students start to read a difficult novel, article, or other text, they may need some information to be able to gain the information they need from it. However, most teachers rely on old fashioned “pre-teaching” of ideas and vocabulary, but research suggests that a pre-questioning approach to texts is actually superior in equipping students for their futures.
What is pre-questioning?
Pre-questioning is a practice where teachers help students to ask themselves questions and do research before tackling a difficult text. It could include having students search for unknown vocabulary in the text and look up the definitions, encouraging students to research authors, or guiding students to outline their goals for their reading.
Pre-Questioning vs. Pre-Teaching
The difference between pre-teaching and pre-questioning is really more focused on whose responsibility it is to prepare for difficult texts. In both approaches the goal is to help students get information they need, but with pre-teaching this is the teachers duty while in pre-questioning this is the students’ duty.
In pre-teaching, teachers know that students will not be able to understand things from the text and want to quickly help them gain the knowledge they need to be successful. They will be explicitly taught difficult vocabulary from the text and given prompts to help them think about the themes they will be analyzing.
In pre-questioning, however, students will be given the text and told to search for the vocabulary and consider questions about themes themselves. While this may seem more time consuming and less supportive, a closer look will reveal why pre-questioning is a better approach in the long run.
Research on the Pre-Questioning Approach to Texts
Clear research on pre-questioning approaches is difficult to conduct as approaches will necessarily vary in effectiveness from text to text and class to class. While the pre-questioning approach itself may remain the same, there are many other variables that are impossible to control without a massive number of participants.
However, the studies that have been done tend to show very positive results for students who use pre-questioning approaches in comparison to pre-teaching. One study found a statistically significant improvement in reading comprehension in the students who were taught using pre-questioning rather than pre-teaching. (Rosnaningsih and Wulandari)
Another recent study gave students a pre and post test to better measure the change both students experienced. While both groups chosen had similar scores before the experiment at around 75, the group taught with pre-questioning saw an increase in almost 10 points up to just under 85, while the control group only saw a small increase not quite reaching 78. (Utami)
The research seems strong, but it is important to note that not all studies found increases and some even found pre-teaching to be more effective in their context. For example, this study conducted in Iran reported “results indicated that the vocabulary pre-teaching one performance was better than the pre-questioning group.” (Mousavian and Siahpoosh)
The majority of studies, such as this one from last year, are somewhere in the middle however, showing a modest, but statistically significant benefit from using the pre-questioning approach in class. (Riswanto) While it may be less exciting, this is often the case with improvements.
They may not always be exciting huge leaps in improvement like revolutionary technologies such as ChatGPT, but instead mindful stepwise improvements that should be implemented when appropriate.
Understanding the Benefits of the Pre-Questioning Approach to Texts
While research may seem to indicate pre-questioning is more effective, some teachers may still be scratching their heads as to why a slower approach to getting students information is better. Pre-teaching may be faster at preparing students for a single text, but pre-questioning prepares students to independently be able to tackle any text they come across in the future.
By focusing on building independence, pre-questioning teaches students approaches to working with a text that is too hard for them. Pre-teaching simply gives the answers without helping students see the process required to gain the information themselves.
Pre-questioning can come in many forms, but really should be a single document or fixed multistep process that students are taught that can be applied to any text. This is better for students because having the same approaches that will work for any text helps them to see the universal application of what they are learning rather than simply understanding that what they are learning will help them with understanding today’s work.
Not only is this consistent approach simpler and clearer for students, it is also way less work for the teacher! Rather than constantly having to build individualized pre-teaching worksheets for every single text they assign, pre-questioning is a lesson plan that can be used over and over without losing its effectiveness.
Pre-questioning is also superior for Universally Designed Lessons rather than relying on differentiation to plug the gaps not filled by the generalized pre-teaching. When choosing what to pre-teach to the class, the teacher must decide what level to teach to which will inevitably make the pre-teaching more effective for some students while making it less effective for others.
For example, if a teacher decides to focus on just pre-teaching basic vocabulary so that students can understand the simple meaning of a text, lower level students may be better prepared for the vocabulary they will come across, but the activity will be a waste of time for higher level students who need higher level pre-teaching to get them thinking conceptually about the textual themes and target audiences.
Conversely, if the teacher tries to focus on pre-teaching higher level concepts, some students may just be left completely lost with the basic vocabulary they need before they can even begin to tackle those higher level ideas. Worst of all, the teacher can try to cover everything and be everything for all students, which in the end can just spread the lesson too thin.
The benefit of pre-questioning is that it allows for students to work at their own level and meet their own needs rather than the teacher trying to make a lecture that prepares all students equally. Students who need to focus on simpler vocab can spend their time looking up and testing themselves on definitions of words while higher level students can speed through the vocab and then begin doing more mentally challenging work such as researching the author, their previous works, and preparing their thoughts on challenging questions.
While at the end, all students will not be at the same level of understanding, this is never the case. However, all students will have had the same amount of time to work on their own personal needs and then be better prepared to do group activities and engage in class discussions.
This will also create independent students who don’t assume that they simply can’t understand a hard text because the teacher didn’t prepare a pre-teaching sheet for them. This approach puts the onus on the student to identify their own learning needs and approach texts from their own perspectives and ways of thinking.
Teachers can spend pre-questioning time helping students identify these areas of weakness and giving coaching-like questions to help students decide next steps to get the understanding they need. That could be helping them get strategies to look up words they don’t know, helping them decide when they are ready to move on from one step to the next, or push them further in their thinking when they think they are finished.
Conclusion
In the end, pre-questioning already shows benefits in the majority of cases even in the short term. However, in the long term, pre-questioning is absolutely better designed as an approach to help students gain skills that they can keep with them after they graduate and use to meet their own needs and solve problems they face in life.
Teachers will still need to decide when pre-teaching might be more appropriate on certain activities or for particularly difficult words or topics. However, teachers should move their default from spoon feeding students everything they need for a text and instead teach them skills so that they can approach any text they might need in their futures independently.
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References
Mousavian, Somayyeh, and Hossein Siahpoosh. “The Effects of Vocabulary Pre-Teaching and Pre-Questioning on Intermediate Iranian EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehenstion Ability.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, vol. 7, no. 2, 2018, p. 58., https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.7n.2p.58.
Riswanto, Riswanto. “The Impact of a Pre-Questioning Technique on Students’ Reading Comprehension at a Bengkulu State Junior High School.” AL-ISHLAH: Jurnal Pendidikan, vol. 14, no. 2, 2022, pp. 2381–2386., https://doi.org/10.35445/alishlah.v14i2.1606.
Rosnaningsih, Asih, and Wulandari Wulandari. “The Effect of Pre-Questioning Technique on Students’ Reading Comprehension.” Journal of English Language Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2017, https://doi.org/10.30870/jels.v2i1.1592.
Utami, I. “THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PRE-QUESTIONING TECHNIQUE TO TEACH READING COMPREHENSION OF NARRATIVE TEXT”. ELT Forum: Journal of English Language Teaching, Vol. 6, no. 1, Dec. 2017, pp. 59-68, doi:10.15294/elt.v6i1.20674.
