ELT365 · D173 — Comprehension questions — designing them well

Idea — Good comprehension questions test understanding, not memorisation. They require learners to process meaning, not copy a line back from the text.

Example — Weak: ‘What does Marta say on line 3?’ Strong: ‘Why does Marta change her mind?’ The second requires inference; the first requires retrieval only.

Try — Take three comprehension questions from a coursebook. Rewrite each so that answering it requires a cognitive step beyond locating the sentence.

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