o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Comprehension
HOME
BLOG
CONTACT ME
EXTRA-CURRICULAR
FOREIGN TOURS
MODULES: CCP
MODULES: Grade 8
MODULES: Grade 9
ONLiNE: G89 Online Radio
ONLiNE: Book Club
ONLiNE: Movie Forum
NOTES
* Advertising
* Cartoon Analysis
* Comprehension
* Emotive Language
* Figurative Language
* Film Study
* Literature
* Media
* Parts of Speech
* Propaganda
* Satire
* Shakespeare
MOVIES
NOVELS
PLAYS
POETRY
XTRA Resources


Notes & Activities
Vocabulary
_______________________________________________________________________
Notes & Activities:
When it comes to comprehensions, one of the major reasons why learners don’t do well is
because they try to find the answers from the text in a word-for-word kind of way. For
example:
Q. According to the text, what type of flower does the boy give the girl?
A. The boy gives the girl a red rose.
However, there are different types or levels of questions. Yes, some questions do come
straight out of the text, but many questions are more interpretive. For example:
Q. What is the significance of his choice of flower?
A. His choice of flower is significant because a rose is commonly associated with love and
the colour red symbolizes passion, so, through his choice of flower, he is telling her that he
loves her.
You won’t find that answer in the text. It’s something that you’d have to think about and
come up with yourself.
What will be helpful is for you to look at the following list of question types.
We set our control tests and exams according to what we call the “Barrett’s Taxonomy of
Reading Comprehension”.
According to the taxonomy, the categories of questions are:





Literal type questions require you to recognise and recall ideas and information
explicitly stated in the text
Reorganisation type questions require you to organize the ideas and information
explicitly stated in the text
Inference type questions require you to use the ideas and information explicitly
stated in the text as the basis for making intelligent guesses / hypotheses
Evaluation type questions require responses indicating that an evaluative
judgment has been made
Appreciation type questions require you to be aesthetically (artistically) and
emotionally sensitive to the ideas and information in the text
You must be prepared to answer all types of questions.
Just for fun ...
You know how teacher's always tell you that there's no such thing as a stupid
question? Well, there is ... and here are some of them:
Q. If someone sees you lying down with your eyes closed and asks: "Are you sleeping?"
A. "No, I'm training for when I die."
Q. When your friend calls your home phone and asks: "Where are you?"
A. "Uh, at the bus stop!"
Q. When someone sees you wet, coming out of the bathroom and asks: "Did you just have
a bath?"
A. "No, I fell in the toilet."
Q. When you're standing right in front of the elevator on the ground floor and someone
asks: "Going up?"
A. "No, no, I'm waiting for my apartment to come down and get me."
Q. When your boyfriend arrives with a bunch of flowers and you ask: "Are those flowers?"
A."No baby, they're carrots."
Q. When a friend sees you in the queue to buy movie tickets and asks: "What are you
doing here?"
A. "I'm here to pay my school fees."
Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions
[Source: Mad Magazine, December 2011]
--------------------------------------------------------------
Activity 1:
Read the following passage and then formulate questions according to the matrix
below. Don't forget to answer your own questions.
Thomas Martin, who managed the Jack in the Box restaurant in Oroville, California,
in 1996, called police and told them he had been robbed of $307 as he was closing
the place.
Martin answered all their questions and then provided police sketch artist Jack Lee
with a detailed description of the suspect. Lee was impressed with the witness’s
memory. Within a matter of minutes, the artist felt confident he had drawn the face
of the suspect.
When Lee put his pad down, he suddenly noticed that the drawing looked very
much like the victim, Thomas Martin. After further questioning by the police, Martin
confessed that he had stolen the money from his own restaurant.
[Source: World’s Dumbest Crooks by Allan Zullo]
Question Matrix:
Barrett's Taxonomy:
Literal:
Reorganization:
Inference:
Evaluation:
Appreciation:
Type of Question:
Recognition of Main Ideas
Outlining
Predicting Outcome
Judgment of Fact or Opinion
Identification with characters or incidents
--------------------------------------------------------------
Activity 2:
Read the following passage and then formulate questions according to the matrix
below. Don't forget to answer your own questions.
A shoplifter swiped $100 worth of film from a Baltimore drugstore, then fled out the
door. He sprinted down the street, turned the corner – and ran smack into bad
luck. The thief was right in front of two officers whose guns were drawn on a
murder suspect lying spread-eagled on the pavement.
“Oh no!” the shoplifter muttered as he dropped the film and raised his hands,
waiting to be arrested. But the officers weren’t real. He had crashed the set of the
TV show Homicide: Life on the Street during rehearsal of an arrest scene!
The shoplifter had given himself up to actors Richard Belzer and Clark Johnson,
who play Baltimore detectives John Munch and Meldrick Lewis on TV. The actors
gave each other a “Now what do we do?” look. They weren’t prepared to arrest the
man, who continued to stand there with his arms raised.
Luckily, real police officers working overtime as security guards for the production
crew soon arrived and took the suspect away. “If he’s convicted,” said Johnson of
the 1996 incident, “the judge should drop the theft charge and send him away for
being stupid.”
[Source: World’s Dumbest Crooks by Allan Zullo]
Question Matrix:
Barrett's Taxonomy:
Literal:
Reorganization:
Inference:
Evaluation:
Appreciation:
Type of Question:
Recall of Details
Summarizing
Interpreting Figurative Language
Judgments of Appropriateness
Emotional Response to the Content
--------------------------------------------------------------
Activity 3:
Read the following passage and then formulate questions according to the matrix
below. Don't forget to answer your own questions.
After buying an Oregan State Lottery ticket, Alice Krumm looked at the winning
numbers posted on a sign by the cash register of the store.
To her dismay, she was only one number away from winning $20. Sneaking to the
back of the store, she took out a ballpoint pen and changed the number on the
lottery ticket. Then she went to the counter to collect her prize.
The clerk spotted her forgery right away and called police, and Krumm was
arrested and charged with fraud. Then the arresting officer made a startling
discovery. Had Krumm looked more closely at the sign listing the winning
numbers, she would have seen that her original ticket had also been a winner – for
$5,000!
[Source: World’s Dumbest Crooks by Allan Zullo]
Question Matrix:
Barrett's Taxonomy:
Literal:
Reorganization:
Inference:
Evaluation:
Appreciation:
Type of Question:
Recognition of Cause and Effect Relationships
Classifying
Inferring Character Traits
Judgments of Adequacy and Validity
Imagery
--------------------------------------------------------------
Activity 4:
Read the following passage and then formulate questions according to the matrix
below. Don't forget to answer your own questions.
Three men broke into a bank in West Covina, California, in 1991. That was their
first mistake. The bank was empty because it was going to be torn down.
Before leaving, one of the men, John Meacham, walked over to the empty bank
vault and suggested his partners step inside to hear the echo of their voices. The
two went in while Meacham closed the vault door so they could appreciate the full
effect of the sound.
That’s when they heard the click. The door had locked. Meacham spent forty
minutes trying to open the safe but failed. In desperation, he called the fire
department, who informed the police.
Seven hours later, after workers broke through the concrete wall, the locked-up
robbers were freed – only to be locked up again, this time in jail.
[Source: World’s Dumbest Crooks by Allan Zullo]
Question Matrix:
Barrett's Taxonomy:
Literal:
Reorganization:
Inference:
Evaluation:
Appreciation:
Type of Question:
Recognition of Comparison
Synthesizing
Inferring Sequence
Judgments of Reality or Fantasy
Reactions to the Author’s Use of Language
--------------------------------------------------------------
Activity 5:
Read the following passage and then formulate questions according to the matrix
below. Don't forget to answer your own questions.
A father and son in Rome, Italy, thought they had plotted the perfect crime.
The father worked as a teller at a bank. The son would enter the bank, go to his
father’s window, and demand money. His father would quickly turn over the cash,
the son would flee, and later the two would split the loot. Best of all, no one would
get hurt because no weapons would be used.
On the day of the robbery attempt, the young man walked into the bank and went
to his father’s window. He got the money and ran out of the bank – but he and his
father were caught anyway.
It seems there was an unfortunate slip of the tongue by the robber. When he was
at the teller’s window, the crook shouted, “This is a holdup. Hand over the money,
Dad.”
[Source: World’s Dumbest Crooks by Allan Zullo]
Question Matrix:
Barrett's Taxonomy:
Literal:
Reorganization:
Inference:
Evaluation:
Appreciation:
Type of Question:
Recognition of Main Ideas
Outlining
Predicting Outcomes
Judgments of Fact or Opinion
Identification with Characters or Incidents
--------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________________________________
Vocabulary:
You will never be able to master a subject if you don't have the vocabulary to support
it. So, please learn the following words (contained in these notes). You will be examined
on them.
Analyze:
Discuss the main ideas and their relative importance
Comment:
Discuss, criticize and explain in detail
Compare:
Show similarities and differences
Define:
Distinguish precisely and accurately between what is and what is not
Describe:
Give a detailed account of the topic.
Discuss:
This calls for detailed arguments in favor of and against the statement.
Evaluate:
Discuss the worth, truth and importance of the statement.
Explain:
Interpret and clarify, with reasons.
Illustrate:
Give concrete examples and comparisons.
Interpret:
Use your own ideas and give examples.
Juxtapose:
Place information next to each other.
Relate:
Argue how two or more aspects are linked or related to each other.
Mention:
Briefly name what is required.
Outline:
Give a summary with the main points arranged in the correct order.
State:
Give a precise description of the most important aspects of the topic.
Synthesize: Integrate the information from various sources and draw conclusions.
Tabulate:
Draw up a table and fill in the particulars needed.
[Source: Unisa BEDALE8/301/4/2010 - General Tutorial Letter 301, 2010]
Copyright of all resources on this website resides with the original authors under the
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 Unported License.