The Effect of Self-Questioning Strategy on EFL Learners Reading Comprehension Development

Hui-Fang Shang, I-Shou University, Taiwan I-Ju Chang-Chien, I-Shou University, Taiwan
Abstract: The issue of self-questioning strategy use has been debated for its effectiveness on reading comprehension. Some scholars propose that there are no benefits for higher metacognition and lower mental development learners; however, self-questioning is still an effective strategy to enhance students reading comprehension because of three essential components including active, metacognitive, and schema processings. Since the effect of self-questioning strategy use is a controversial issue, the purpose of this study was to explore its effectiveness on EFL learners reading comprehension. One hundred and eighteen freshmen participated in the study. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used including t-test, ANOVA, and semi-structured interview techniques to explore its effect. Results of this study demonstrate that students reading comprehension is enhanced significantly by self-questioning strategy training, especially for low level students, and students have positive attitudes toward employing self-questioning strategy in their future reading activities. Pedagogical implications for EFL educators to recognize the directions of instructional practices for enhancing reading comprehension are presented. Keywords: Metacognitive Strategy Use, Self-questioning Strategy Training, EFL Reading Comprehension

Introduction

ITH THE VIEW of international globalization, English learning is a trend in Taiwan, no matter for kindergarten children or for college students. According to Yuan (2002), the most convenient approach to learn English is via reading; also, Carrell (1984) proposed that reading is the most important skill in English learning. However, it is not easy to be a successful reader because reading is a complicated process integrating top-down, bottom-up, interactive, construction-integration, and recycling processes (Barnett, 1989; McCormick, 1998). Many Taiwanese EFL students approach reading passively, reading heavily on the bilingual dictionary, and spending much time in translating sentences; they often select ineffective and inefficient strategies with little intent (Ko, 2002). Nevertheless, some scholars maintain that reading can be trained as long as using appropriate learning strategies (Olsen & Gee, 1991). With this viewpoint, many scholars try to find out what kind of learning strategy is more effective in reading comprehension development. According to previous studies, metacognitive strategy is more effective for students to improve their reading comprehension because positive relationship is found between metacognitive strategy use and reading comprehension (Baker & Brown, 1984; Chang & Huang, 2001; Muiz-Swicegood, 1994; Shang, 2007); that is, if learners have a higher frequency of

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employing metacognitive strategy, they will have better reading comprehension performance. More studies further show that using self-questioning strategy, one of the metacognitive strategies, could enhance students reading comprehension effectively via generating higher order questions, increasing students metacognition, and activating learners prior knowledge (Andre & Anderson, 1978-1979; Chang, 1994; Clark et al., 1984; Davey & McBride, 1986; Davey & McBride, 1986a; Foote, 1998; Haller et al., 1988; King, 1994 Singer and Donlan, 1982; Taylor et al., 2002; Wong & Jones, 1982). On the other hand, it is also a controversial issue on the effect of students reading comprehension because there are some restrains on this strategy, such as no benefits for higher metacomprehension and lower mental development learners, and those who do not get any training of using self-questioning strategy (DeLisi, 2001; El-Koumy, 1996; Glaubman et al., 1997; Miciano, 2002; Wong & Jones, 1982). Obviously, the effect of self-questioning strategy use is limited for certain groups of learners.

Purpose of the Study

Since using self-questioning strategy is a controversial issue on learners reading comprehension, the purpose of this study was to explore the effect of self-questioning strategy training on EFL learners reading performance. Three research questions are composed in the following: 1. 2. 3. Can self-questioning strategy training significantly enhance Taiwanese EFL learners reading comprehension? Is there a significant difference among students with different proficiency levels on the improvement of reading performance? What are students attitudes toward self-questioning strategy training?

Literature Review
Rationale of Self-Questioning Strategy
Self-questioning strategy is designed to help students effectively understand complex reading demands (Schumaker et al., 1994). King (1989) proposed that the focus of questions-generated strategy is to let readers attention fully concentrate on major concepts of the texts, and then to analyze the content with the prior knowledge and to do evaluation during the process of questioning and answering. If readers can not correctly answer the questions which they generate, it means that readers do not understand the content of the text clearly and deeply. Therefore, through self-questioning use, readers could be aware what they have already known or not after reading. According to literature, there are three essential elements to result in successful reading performance via self-questioning strategy use including (1) active processing, which implies that students can become active readers and independent thinkers via generating questions in order to understand the text (Wong, 1985); (2) metacognitive processing, which indicates that teachers help students monitor their reading process via identifying important information in texts, regulating strategies to face difficulties, and self-questioning to enhance reading comprehension (Flavell, 1976); (3) schema processing, which implies that students incline to use their prior knowledge to interpret information as facing the situation which incoming information of the text suits these expectations via self-questioning strategy use (Anderson, 42

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1977; Smith, 1977). More details about the effect of those three elements of self-questioning strategy use on reading enhancement are discussed as follows.

Active Processing
In the viewpoint of active processing, students become active readers and independent thinkers via generating questions in order to understand the text (Wong, 1985). According to Clark et al. (1984), learning disabled students can increase their reading comprehension via self-questioning strategy use because it can allow students to remember more information from reading passages and to perform better on comprehension tests. Based on Clark et al.s research result, using self-questioning strategy can make students get involved in the content of the text actively. Changs (1994) study also supported that learners can pay more attention to the text to improve reading comprehension via self-questioning strategy use. According to Changs study (cited from Shihs paper), she used Pearson and Johnsons (1978) classification of questions, such as textually explicit questions, textually implicit questions, and scripturally implicit questions, as the framework to discuss the effect of self-questioning strategy use on poor readers. The result shows that students improved their reading comprehension on story-based articles because using self-questioning strategy could let students pay more attention to the text, and further help to organize the materials as well as to provide opportunities for review. In addition, Davey and McBride (1986) proved that students could concentrate more on their reading to increase inferential comprehension via self-questioning strategy use. The finding indicates that there were positive relations among generated-question training on reading comprehension; a more significant effect was found between generating inferential comprehension questions and reading comprehension. The finding reveals that concentrating is the key factor to increase inferential comprehension via self-questioning strategy use. Thus, self-questioning strategy training is useful to enhance students reading comprehension because students are able to pay more attention to the text actively. Moreover, there is a positive relationship between generating higher order questions and reading comprehension; that is, the more higher order questions students generate, the better reading performance they have. In Davey and McBrides (1986a) research, the finding shows that students reading comprehension in the question-generation group was better than students in the read-reread group because students could generate more higher order questions to improve reading comprehension. Therefore, using self-questioning strategy could make students attend to and elaborate important and implied passage information to enhance reading comprehension by generating good quality and higher order questions. On the other hand, there is no effect via using self-questioning strategy on reading comprehension if students have no experience in posing higher order questions. Based on El-Koumys (1996) study, the outcomes indicate that student-generated question group scored significantly lowest in the reciprocally teaching group and the teacher-provided question group. The possible reason is that participants in the student-generated group did not have any experience in generating higher questions. Therefore, teachers should train students to generate higher order questions to improve their reading comprehension. Overall, self-questioning is an effective strategy to improve students reading comprehension due to paying more attention to the content of the text and generating higher order questions.

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Metacognitive Processing
The second factor to result in the effectiveness of self-questioning strategy use is the application of metacognitve processing. Metacognitive-theory based self-questioning strategy is effective because students can be aware of their lack of reading comprehension through selfquestioning strategy use. In other words, the use of self-questioning strategy can enhance learners metacognition to promote reading comprehension (Andre & Anderson, 1978-1979; Haller et al, 1988; Wong & Jones, 1982). Previous studies show that students can be stimulated by their metacognition through self-questioning strategy use during reading process. As long as students metacogntion is enhanced, they are able to regulate their own reading process by asking Is there anything I do not understand in this paragraph? (Wong, 1985). Hence, using self-questioning strategy can promote reading comprehension because of the increase of metacognition, so that students can monitor their understanding of the text during reading process. However, there is no obvious effect for normal achieving students to use self-questioning strategy to increase their reading comprehension. According to Wong and Jones (1982) study, self-questioning strategy does not substantially increase normal achieving students reading performance because they already have higher metacomprehension to monitor their reading process. Therefore, to apply such a strategy in class, teachers should consider the factor of students level of metacomprehension; otherwise, normal achieving students can not get any benefit from self-questioning strategy training. Besides, there is no positive relation for kindergarten children to promote their reading comprehension through generating high-quality questions because their mental development is still in the preoperational stage. According to Glaubman et al.s (1997) research, the result indicates that there is no positive relation for kindergarten children to promote reading comprehension because their abstract thinking ability was not well developed to find the major points of the texts. Therefore, it is concluded that there was no effect for lower mental development learners to apply metacognitive processing because of the undeveloped thinking ability.

Schema Processing
The third factor to have a great influence via self-questioning strategy use on reading comprehension is the application of schema processing. Smith (1977) proposed that schema has crucial effects in interpreting new information, just like a set of expectations; hence, for good readers, they tend to use their prior knowledge to interpret the incoming information to aid their reading comprehension. However, lack of schemata would affect their reading process. Therefore, training students to activate their prior knowledge by asking what do you think would happen if our A was ? or how is the A related to your B? (King, 1994) is an important issue to promote students reading comprehension. According to Footes (1998) research, the result shows that there was no positive effect between student-generated questions and reading comprehension if lack of prior knowledge; that is, if students are unfamiliar with the topics of the texts, their reading comprehension could not be improved via self-questioning strategy use. Therefore, to understand the content, it is beneficial to possess the background knowledge of the subject matter.

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In addition to possessing prior knowledge, it is even more important to activate learners background knowledge for better reading performance. Singer and Donlan (1982) proposed that training students to generate questions related to their prior knowledge can improve reading comprehension effectively. Also, King (1994) stated that when using self-questioning strategy, questions designed to access learners prior knowledge are more effective in enhancing reading comprehension because students prior knowledge is to be activated. To sum up, students can enhance their reading comprehension by activating their prior knowledge via self-questioning strategy training. However, training students to generate main-idea questions while reading can only enhance their memory of the content rather than reading comprehension. Based on DeLisis (2001) research, the finding reveals that training students to generate main-idea questions could only increase their retention of the content. In other words, reading comprehension could not be improved by generating main-idea questions. Hence, it is essential for teachers to train students to generate various types of questions, especially higher order questions; otherwise, students can not promote their reading comprehension.

Other Elements to Affect the Effect of Self-Questioning Strategy Use

Some various elements, such as participants cultural backgrounds, probably influence students reading achievement of a prose text in English when using self-questioning strategy. According to Micianos (2002) research, she pointed out that there was no significant improvement of students reading comprehension after self-questioning strategy training. She proposed that the participants various cultural backgrounds, time constraints of employing self-questioning strategy, the method of comprehension evaluation used, and the nature and duration of question-formulation training are the possible key elements to affect the outcomes. Therefore, when using self-questioning strategy as a reading approach for ESL or EFL students, students background or the implementation should be taken into consideration.

Methodology
This section details the methodology employed in the study. The research design included the subjects, self-questioning strategy training program, instrumentation, procedure, and data analysis.

Subjects
Subjects in this study were 118 freshmen majoring in English at I-Shou University. The subjects included 23 males and 95 females ranging from 18- to 20-years-of-age, with a mean age of 18. Most subjects received formal English instruction for at least seven years. A prereading test was conducted during the first and second weeks of the class to divide the subjects into advanced, intermediate, and low levels on the basis of their simulated TOEFL reading test scores. There were 31 reading comprehension items in total. Subjects would get one point if they chose the correct answer. The test results ranged from two to 24 points, with the mean of 13.6 and the median of 15. Thirty subjects whose scores ranged from 17 to 24 were labeled advanced; 40 subjects with scores of 13 to 16 were labeled intermediate, and 46 subjects with scores of two to 12 were labeled low.

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Self-Questioning Strategy Training Program

Learning contexts. The strategy training program was designed as a reading course during the Fall 2008 semester. The aim of this course was to cultivate students English reading comprehension by using appropriate strategies. During the eight-week training, the topics of the texts included travels, disappearing animals, and money. Taiwanese customs, Austronesian wedding activities to be held at Pingtungs Aboriginal Cultural Park, animal abuse, young walruses trampled by stampedes in warming Arctic, the history of American money, and woman in postcode drugs lottery were the relevant articles used in this study. The range of the length of the article was from 180 to 300 words. Teaching approaches. The activities applied in the self-questioning strategy training program included teachers demonstration, students group work, and students individual practice. The details of the procedures are stated as follows. In the beginning of the semester, teachers demonstration was conducted first, which included: (1) giving a brief introduction to the self-questioning strategy techniques and a description of steps that should be followed in reading a text; (2) introducing three types of questions, memory, main-idea, and higher order questions for students; (3) showing a short article and generating three types of questions based on the content of the text, and (4) encouraging students to use the self-questioning strategy. After teachers demonstration, students group work was carried out. The steps contained: (1) asking some questions to activate students background knowledge; (2) asking students to read the article within a group and try to generate three types of questions, and (3) asking some groups of students to share their generated questions and evaluate whether their questions fit into each type of questions. In this stage, reminding cards were used to give students hints about each type of questions. After two-weeks training, students individual practice was implemented. The process was the same with the steps of students group work, but the difference was that there was no reminding card for hints, and students had to practice generating questions individually.

Instrumentation
In order to examine the effect of self-questioning strategy training on EFL reading comprehension, two types of instruments were employed in the study: (1) a reading comprehension test and (2) a semi-structured interview technique to explore in-depth perceptions toward the conditions of strategy instruction. More details about the instruments are described as followed. Reading comprehension test. In order to control the language proficiency test with high validity and reliability, a standardized reading test was conducted based on the simulated TOEFL test. Only reading comprehension section was employed to evaluate students reading performance after eight-week self-questioning training. Students were asked to take the same comprehension test in the beginning (pre-test) and at the end of the semester (posttest). Semi- structured interview. Eighteen participants were interviewed individually by using the semi-structured technique. Random purposeful sampling was conducted in this study. Six participants from each proficiency level were randomly selected for doing the interview. In order to protect the participants from harm, they were informed with a consent form, stating that they had the right not to answer the sensitive questions, and they also had the

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right to withdraw the interview process anytime. Participants were also informed that their personal information would not be identified in any way because their names were replaced by numbers. During the interview, the participants were asked to answer the predetermined questions, either in English or Chinese; besides, the interviewer also explored far beyond the answers to the prepared questions. The interview questions mainly focused on the participants past and present experiences as well as opinions toward using self-questioning strategy in the reading class. A pilot test was conducted by the first two participants to compose more follow-up questions, change wording, and revise ambiguous questions based on their reflections.

Procedure
Data collection took place over an eight-week period including pre- and post- tests at the research site. In the beginning of the semester, the pre-test, lasting for exactly 30 minutes, was used to investigate students proficiency level. During the training period, self-questioning practice was administered to the students as one part of the regular class activities. The practice time was conducted every other week and lasted for an hour. At the end of the semester, the post- test was conducted. Finally, individual interview was administered to get more in-depth information about students comments and reflections.

Data Analysis
The data analysis techniques in this study included both qualitative and quantitative approaches to evaluate the following three research questions: (1) Can self-questioning strategy training enhance Taiwanese EFL learners reading comprehension? (2) Is there a significant difference among students with different proficiency levels on the improvement of reading comprehension performance? (3) What are students attitudes toward self-questioning strategy training? To examine the effect of self-questioning strategy use on EFL students reading performance, a paired-sample t-test was carried out to compare students performance in the reading comprehension tests taken before and after the strategy training. Additionally, ANOVA was employed to investigate whether students different proficiency levels have significant differences on their reading outcomes. Finally, a semi-structured interview technique was utilized to collect more in-depth information about students perceptions. Tape recording was employed during the interview process. After the interviews, the tapes were transcribed by the interviewer. After transcribing, the interest passages were marked and labeled for further coding analyses.

Results
Research question 1: Can self-questioning strategy training significantly enhance Taiwanese EFL learners reading comprehension? The descriptive statistics regarding the mean scores of the reading comprehension test at the beginning (pre-test) and at the end of the semester (post-test) are shown in Table 1 by computing a paired-sample t-test. Results indicate that the mean for pre-test was 13.60 (SD = 4.63). The mean increased to 15.59 (SD = 3.31) after eight-week training program. It is

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obvious that the average score of post-test was higher than that in the pre-test; a significant difference was found at the 0.05 probability level. It is, therefore, assumed that students significantly improved their reading comprehension after the self-questioning strategy training. Table 1: Paired-sample t-test Results for Students Reading Performance Students Reading Performance Pre-test Post-test Note: * p < .05 Research question 2: Is there a significant difference among students with different proficiency levels on the improvement of reading comprehension performance ? An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to analyze the statistical significance of advanced, intermediate, and low readers differences in the comprehension tests taken after (post-test) the self-questioning strategy training program. As indicated in Table 2, a significant difference among levels was found, [F (2, 115) = 41.01, p = .000]. Table 2: One-way ANOVA Analysis between Students Proficiency Levels and Reading Performance Sum of Squares Post-test Scores Between Groups Within Groups Total Note: * p < .05 Scheffe post hoc comparison procedure was further employed to examine multiple comparisons among the three level means. The result in Table 3 reveals that the advanced learners scored significantly higher (M = 19.17, SD = 2.82) than intermediate (M = 14.9, SD = 2.11), and then followed by low learners (M = 13.94, SD = 2.71) in the post-test scores. However, low learners showed greater improvement on the reading score (mean for pre-test = 9.02, SD = 2.6; mean for post-test = 13.94, SD = 2.71, with the mean difference = 4.92), indicating that students who had a poorer reading ability got more benefits from self-questioning strategy training than the advanced learners (mean for pre-test = 19.2, SD = 2.25; mean for post-test = 19.17, SD = 2.82, with the mean difference = -0.03). 533.89 748.57 1282.47 df Mean Squares 266.94 6.50 F Sig. N 118 118 Mean 13.60 15.59 (SD) (4.63) (3.31) t -8.28* Sig. .000

2 115 117

41.010

.000 *

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Table 3: Results for Students Proficiency Levels and Reading Performance (I) level N H I L Total 30 40 48 118 Pre-M (SD) 19.20 (2.25) 14.90 (0.98) 9.02 (2.60) Post-M (SD) (J) level 19.17 (2.82) 14.90 (2.11) 13.94 (2.71) I L H L H I Mean Difference (I-J) Sig. 4.26* 5.22* -4.26* 0.96 -5.22* 0.96 .000 .000 .000 .216 .000 .216

Research question 3 : What are students attitudes toward self-questioning strategy training ? To elicit the participants in-depth perceptions toward the conditions of self-questioning strategy training on reading development, six participants were randomly selected from each proficiency level to do individual interview after the self-questioning strategy instruction, The interview results show that 15 out of 18 participants reported that they could pay more attention to the content of the text actively via generating questions. Furthermore, 17 out of 18 participants pointed out that generating higher order questions was more effective to improve their reading comprehension than generating memory and main-idea questions. Most participants revealed that when practicing about generating three types of questions, they could generate more sensitive and comprehensive questions because they liked challenges. They thought generating more higher order questions could increase their organization of the text, promote their critical thinking and further improve their reading comprehension. For memory questions, they felt that it was more likely to test their memory of some detailed part of the content, such as numbers, names and so on. Hence, they did not think that there was an obvious effect on their reading comprehension. Main-idea questions only gave them a basic idea about the content without increasing inferential comprehension. Therefore, most participants preferred to use higher order questions because such inferential questions could make them actively get involved in the content and become critical thinkers and independent readers. Besides, 11 out of 18 participants stated that they could monitor their reading process to enhance their reading comprehension effectively via self-questioning strategy use, especially for low learners. Additionally, 14 out of 18 participants expressed that the type of the topics was an important element for their reading comprehension, particularly for low level learners. More specifically, 17 out of 18 participants reported that their prior knowledge and past reading experience could be activated via self-questioning strategy use. Since using selfquestioning strategy can activate students prior knowledge, 12 of 18 participants described that they could get a positive effect via activating their prior knowledge for their reading development. Overall, after self-questionings strategy training, the majority of participants expressed that their reading comprehension was enhanced significantly, and they had positive attitudes toward self-questioning strategy use in their future reading activities. However, the minority of the participants kept a negative attitude toward the use of self-questioning because it took time to employ such a strategy. Especially for good readers, they felt that they could not get

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any improvement from the training; part of the reason is that they have already integrated various reading skills in their reading process, so that they did not want to spend more time in employing this strategy in their own reading activities.

Discussions
The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of self-questioning strategy training on EFL learners reading comprehension. Based on the statistical analyses and students perceptions of self-questioning strategy use, several major findings came out from the study. First of all, regarding the effect of self-questioning strategy training on reading performance, the result of the present study indicates that students generally obtained improvement in comprehension after self-questioning training. Such a result strongly supports findings in the literature (Andre & Anderson, 1978-1979; Chang, 1994; Clark et al., 1984; Davey & McBride, 1986; Davey & McBride, 1986a; Foote, 1998; Haller et al., 1988; King, 1994 Singer and Donlan, 1982; Taylor et al., 2002; Wong & Jones, 1982), indicating that students reading comprehension can be promoted effectively via intensive self-questioning instruction. To explore the factors to result in such an enhancement, the interview result reveals that students were able to pay more attention to the content of the text actively because they had to generate questions and answer them based on the teachers guidance. Also, most students proposed that generating higher order questions could effectively enhance their reading comprehension because it could highly promote their organization and thinking ability. Thus, the result matches with the previous studies (Davey & McBride, 1986a; DeLisi, 2001), indicating that there is a positive relationship between generating higher order questions and reading comprehension via self-questioning strategy use. Additionally, most students stated that using self-questioning strategy was helpful for them to monitor, test, and check their reading understanding exactly during the reading process. Such a result supports findings in the literature (Andre & Anderson, 1978-1979; Haller et al., 1988; Shih, 1999; Wong & Jones, 1982), suggesting that self-questioning strategy use can enhance EFL reading comprehension because it increases learners metacognition to monitor their understanding during the reading process. Second, regarding the differences among different proficiency-level learners and reading comprehension performance, the finding of this study demonstrates that students with a lower reading ability showed a greater improvement on the reading scores than did students with the advanced reading ability. This is consistent with the view that advanced readers have already possessed higher metacomprehension to monitor their understanding of the texts, so that there is no obvious effect for advanced students to use self-questioning strategy to increase their reading comprehension. Such result matches with the previous researchers studies (Owings et al., 1980; Wong & Jones, 1982), demonstrating that low level learners can get more benefits toward self-questioning training on their reading development. Third, most students expressed that if they were familiar with the topic of the article, it was much easier for them to read the article and further affect their reading comprehension. In addition, most students reported that they could activate their prior knowledge via selfquestioning training; such a result fits into the previous researches (Brasford et al., 1982; Singer & Donaln, 1982), supporting that students could obtain positive effects of activating their prior knowledge in reading comprehension because such activation could promote students critical thinking and then integrate their new learning and past knowledge together to enhance their reading comprehension (King, 1994).

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Overall, most students pointed out that their reading comprehension could be enhanced significantly via self-questioning strategy use, and they would rather use it in their future reading activities. On the other hand, there is a limitation of self-questioning strategy use. Most advanced learners stated that they wasted much time in using this strategy because they had to generate and answer questions after their reading. Such an opinion matches with the previous study (Miciano, 2002), indicating that time constraint is a crucial element for students to affect their reading effect. Also, those who were advanced learners did not feel that they could get any benefit from using this strategy since they already had an ability to monitor their reading comprehension through other integrated reading strategies (Owings et al., 1980; Wong & Jones, 1982).

Conclusion
According to the research results, self-questioning strategy is useful to enhance students reading comprehension because it can help students pay more attention to the content of the text, generate higher order questions, enhance metacognition, and activate prior knowledge. However, it is hard for advanced students to improve their reading performance via selfquestioning strategy use. Since the positive effects outweigh its limitations, it can be concluded that self-questioning strategy is an effective method to promote most students, especially poor readers reading comprehension. Several pedagogical implications are offered to EFL instructors based on some minority students comments: First of all, although most students can get positive effects via selfquestioning strategy use due to increased metacognition, the majority of advanced learners did not get such a positive impact. In order to make advanced learners obtain more effects of self-questioning use, teachers can use more difficult texts to train their critical thinking and comprehension abilities. Second, time constraint is the crucial element to result in the negative effect because students do not have enough time to generate and answer questions after reading the texts. As a result, teachers can allow students to write key words, instead of writing a full question. Third, a few students suggest that teachers should give more demonstrations regarding how to generate higher order questions before using self-questioning strategy. During the practice time, teachers should be a facilitator to help students individually. To sum up, an ineffective strategy use is the barrier for most Taiwanese students to improve their English reading ability, so that training them to use an appropriate strategy can assist their reading comprehension effectively. Using self-questioning strategy is a good method to promote EFL students reading performance since they can become active and independent readers due to paying more attention to the content of the text, increasing metacognition, and activating their prior knowledge. It is expected that the research result can provide college English reading teachers with an initiative to employ self-questioning strategy in reading class in order to promote students reading comprehension development.

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About the Authors

Hui-Fang Shang Hui-Fang Shang was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. In 1996, she earned her ED.D. degree at University of Southern California in USA. Now she is a Full Professor and Chairperson of

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the Department of Applied English at I-Shou University in Taiwan. Her expertise and research interests include TEFL and curriculum/instructional design. I-Ju Chang-Chien I-Shou University, Taiwan

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