The Effects of Strategic Adjunct Questions on L2 Reading and Strategy Use

Abstract

This experimental study examined the effect of answering strategic adjunct questions (AQs) on L2 reading comprehension and strategy use. Participants were 124 Chinese intermediate-advanced EFL learners from a large public university in China. Of them, 24 and 100 participated in the pilot study and formal study, respectively. Participants read two expository texts under either condition (with or without strategic Aqs) and completed three comprehension tasks: free written recall, sentence completion, and multiple-choice. Additionally, participants completed an automated Operation Span Task, a demographic questionnaire, a topic familiarity questionnaire, and a reading strategy survey. In the end, participants’ perspectives on strategic Aqs were obtained. This study features a repeated measures design. Paired sample t-test, Pearson correlation, and regression were used for data analysis. Overall, the data revealed a potentially valuable contribution of higher-order Aqs to L2 reading comprehension and strategies use.