Effects of Elaborative Interrogation on EFL Reading Comprehension in Terms of the Structure of Text

Abstract

The present study investigated the effects of elaborative interrogation on EFL reading comprehension. The elaborative interrogation technique requires readers to clarify the relationships between the main idea in a text and other information by asking questions on the main idea of each paragraph (Seifert, 1993). In first language (L1) research, the effectiveness of elaborative interrogation has been widely supported. However, few studies have examined the effects on second language (L2) reading. A total of 49 Japanese undergraduate school students took part in this study. They were divided into four groups: control-upper (n = 11), control-lower (n = 14), treatment-upper (n = 11), and treatment-lower (n = 13). Their performances in a summary writing task were compared in order to examine the effects of elaborative interrogation on EFL readers of different proficiency. The main findings of this study were (a) the elaborative interrogation facilitated EFL reading comprehension, especially understanding of the main ideas of the text and other information related to them; and (b) the facilitation effect of elaborative interrogation did not differ according to participants' reading proficiency.