Based on the design of the study in the methodology chapter, questions generated in class were the target data assessed using Bloom’s Taxonomy and then classified into six-level types. Besides, the quantities of questions for each article might vary due to the different numbers of paragraphs in each article.
Results of the Whole Class.
Table 18 demonstrates an overview of question types for the five articles in three aspects: the number, the percentage, and the ranking.
To begin with, the top three question levels for the first article went to the lower ones, i.e. Remembering, Understanding, and Applying. About half of the questions fell into Remembering type (49%), which was almost twice the percentage of Understanding (26%). Applying was ten percent less than the second place. As for the higher level questions, Analyzing and Evaluating, the total number of questions amounted to 9, accounting for 9%. None of the questions belonged to Creating at this preliminary stage.
Though Remembering question type (59%) still topped the list with the
Table 18. The Overview of Question Type Analysis For Five Articles From the Whole Class
Question Type
Article 1 Article 2 Article 3 Article 4 Article 5
N P R N P R N P R N P R N P R
Remembering 50 49 % 1 40 59 % 1 26 38 % 1 24 35 % 2 12 18 % 3 Understanding 27 26 % 2 6 9 % 4 8 12 % 3 3 4 % 5 19 28 % 2 Applying 16 16 % 3 10 15 % 2 20 30 % 2 28 41% 1 20 29 % 1 Analyzing 8 8 % 4 9 13 % 3 5 7 % 5 4 6 % 4 12 18 % 3 Evaluating 1 1 % 5 2 3 % 5 2 3 % 6 0 0 6 3 4 % 5 Creating 0 0 6 1 1 % 6 7 10 % 4 9 14 % 3 2 3 % 6
Notes: N: Number of questions, P: Percentage, R: Ranking
Applying (15%), and the third one was Analyzing (13%). It seemed that the question levels obviously moved up. In contrast with 9 questions in the first article, three more questions which fell into higher levels, i.e. Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating, were generated.
At the first glance, the top three question types in Article #3, Remembering, Understanding, and Applying, remained the same as the first article; however, the ranking order had changed. Applying questions outnumbered Understanding by 18%.
Compared with the second article, Analyzing questions decreased from 13% to 7 %.
Almost one-fifth of the questions belonged to higher levels, i.e. Analyzing (7%), Evaluating (3%), and Creating (10%).
In the fourth article, Applying questions (41%) were the most popular type, followed by Remembering (35%) and Creating (14%). Amazingly, the highest thinking level, Creating questions, ranked the third, whose total figure also outnumbered the combination of Understanding (4%), Analyzing (6%), and
Evaluating (0%).
Applying questions (29%) in the fifth article won Understanding (28%) by a narrow margin of 1%. The students generated 10 percent less Remembering (18%) and Analyzing questions (18%) than Understanding questions (28%). Almost one-fourth of the questions were sorted into higher levels, that is, Analyzing (18%), Evaluating (4%), and Creating (3%).
As can be seen in Table 19, a comparison of question types between the first and the fifth articles was made. In other words, the subtraction of the number of the first questions from the final ones manifested students’ improvement in their question-raising ability. The most eminent difference took place in the generation of Remembering questions, which had reduced from 49% to 18%. On the contrary, Applying questions escalated from 16% into 29 %. Objectively speaking, except for Remembering questions, the rest question types were on an upward trend.
Table 19. Question Type Comparison Between Article 1 and Article 5 From the Whole Class
Results of the High and Low Proficiency Readers.
Table 20 presents the percentage of student self-generated question types from
remained the most prominent type from the first article to the fourth, while Understanding questions increased from 28% to 41%. The other question type that appeared equally popular was Applying, for it stayed on the chart all along with the increment of 6 % from the first (11%) to the last article (17%). Especially in the third and fourth articles, over one-third of questions were sorted into Applying, and this had indicated the influence of certain topics on students. Likewise, only in these two articles did high achievers generate Creating questions, with 8% and 17% in each respectively.
Table 20. The Overview of Question Type Analysis for Five Articles From High Achievers
Question Type
Article 1 Article 2 Article 3 Article 4 Article 5
N P R N P R N P R N P R N P R
Remembering 11 61% 1 10 84% 1 4 34% 1 5 42% 1 3 25% 2 Understanding 5 28% 2 0 0 0 1 8% 3 0 0 0 5 41% 1 Applying 2 11% 3 1 8% 2 4 34% 1 4 33% 2 2 17% 3 Analyzing 0 0 0 1 8% 2 1 8% 3 1 8% 4 2 17% 3 Evaluating 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 8% 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 Creating 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 8% 3 2 17% 3 0 0 0 Notes: N: Number of questions P: Percentage R: Ranking
If compared between the first and the final articles as Table 21 details, the number of Understanding, Applying and Analyzing questions increased by a margin of 13%, 6%, and 17%. Only Remembering questions were on the decrease from 61%
Table 21. Question Types Comparison Between Article 1 and Article 5 From there happened to be no such questions generated by high achievers.
Table 22 below contains the percentage of each question type generated by low achievers in the five articles. Starting from the first article to the fourth one, Remembering was the most prevailing question type. Except for the first article, such type occupied by exactly or over 50 percent of questions, as 61 % in the second article, 50 % in the third and the fourth articles. In the final practice, low achievers could generate up to 50 % Applying questions, which was a great step forward.
Table 22. The Overview of Question Type Analysis for Five Articles From Low Achievers Notes: N: Number of questions, P: Percentage, R: Ranking
Understanding and Analyzing, decreased in percentages. Among them, Understanding questions even decreased by slightly over one-third (33%). On the contrary, the number of Applying and Creating questions went up. Only Evaluating questions remained intact as 0 %.
Table 23. Question Types Comparison Between Article 1 and Article 5 From Low Achievers
After adding up the lower levels of question percentages together (see Table 24), namely, Remembering, Understanding, and Applying, we got 100 % to 83% in the first and final articles from high achievers, while 83% and 74% in low achieving readers. Conversely, in higher-order question types, i.e. Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating, the results were from 17% to 26% with low achievers. For high achievers, the percentage climbed from 0% to 17 %.
Table 24. The Changing Sum of Percentages in Question Levels From High and Low Achievers.
High Achievers Low Achievers
Question Type Low Levels High Levels Low Levels High Levels
Article 1 100 % 0 % 83 % 17%
Article 5 83 % 17 % 74 % 26 %
Diff. 17 % -17 % 9 % -9 %
Note: Diff: Difference