Abstract
This paper aims to demonstrate, as a case study using qualitative analysis, the effectiveness of evaluative, as opposed to fact-finding, questions for deepening learners' reading comprehension and developing their critical thinking skills in the instruction of reading. A short narrative was used as the text for 68 low-proficiency EFL college students. They were posed a series of evaluative questions as they read it, such as those that required them to predict the next turn of the plot, detect incongruities in the text, draw elaborative inferences about implicit causality, retell the story from a different view point, and reflect on and evaluate the main characters and the theme of the story. Analyses of learners' responses to these questions reveal degrees of their deepened understanding of the text and use of critical thinking skills.
