| Note: |
The guiding questions can be used to prompt or extend students' responses or to clarify understanding. The questions increase in level of difficulty according to both their linguistic complexity and the amount and kind of thinking that is necessary to respond to them. Students of different English ability levels can be asked to respond to different levels of questions according to what they can handle. Since the purpose of questioning is to get students talking independently in English, scores should not be based on the level of the question, only on the level of the student's performance in asking or responding. Questions requiring students to assess the structure or the literary value of the text should not be asked. |
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| Level 1 |
General response (Function: recognising general content of text and making connections to prior knowledge/existing experience, but not reliant on having read or viewed text in any depth) |
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Guiding questions: What do you know about X? Have you ever seen/been… etc. |
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e.g. This film is about birds. Do you like birds? Have you ever been to Mai Po marshes? |
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| Level 2 |
Literal response (Functions: naming, describing, recounting, indicating sequence and cause and effect, requiring students to retrieve basic facts about text; mainly material and relational processes) |
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Guiding questions: Who, what , where, when, why, how ? (In relation to plot, life history, "facts" of the documentary etc.) |
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e.g. What happened in the story? (If it is a story) when and where is the story set? Who are the main characters? Why did X do Y to Z? |
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| Level 3 |
Reflective response (Functions: all the above, plus opinion-giving, comparing, explaining, justifying in relation to own feelings/experiences, ideas, etc.; mainly verbal and mental processes, more complex sentences) |
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Guiding questions: What did you think? Did you like? How did you feel? |
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e.g. Did you like the ending? Why /why not? Who/what was your favourite character/part etc. and why? Did you like X better than Y? |
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| Level 4 |
Interpretive response (Functions: all the above, plus speculating, hypothesising, etc. as students required to synthesise information from different parts of text, analyse and interpret, discuss implications; longer and more complex utterances) |
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Guiding questions: Why do you think the author/film-maker did X? How do you think people in Y would respond to X? How has the text changed the way you think about Z? |
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e.g. In what ways did different characters/protagonists respond differently to events in the text? |
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| Level 5 |
Critical response (Functions: all the above, plus demand students apply or integrate ideas in new or creative ways; evaluate actions, events or characters/people in critical ways, hypothesise and speculate; complex use of modality, past tense forms, conditionals) |
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Guiding questions: If you were/did/could … what would …? |
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e.g. If you were the writer/filmmaker, what would you have done differently to communicate your ideas? If you were Harry Potter, what would you have done when X happened, and why? |
