Using Bloom’s revised taxonomy to design in-class reading questions for intermediate students in the context of Vietnam

• Main Author: Nguyen, Chi Duc
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội 2014
• Subjects: English language.; English language$xUsage; Tiếng Anh$xCách dùng; Tiếng Anh
• Online Access: http://repository.vnu.edu.vn/handle/11126/6394
• Institution: Vietnam National University, Hanoi

The findings from the questionnaire survey conducted among 100 instructors of English in Vietnam about the reading-question design for the intermediate solicited three worth-noticing issues. First, the design aims mainly to develop in students reading skills, language elements or both. Second, the designed questions are largely of recalling and understanding the information (the lower level of cognitive domain, Bo-linn, 2006) and leave a large gap on the applying, analysing, evaluating and creating (the higher level of cognitive domain, Bo-linn, 2006). Finally, most of the instructors have yet established a basis to accompany this task. Therefore, the writer proposed the application of Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (Pohl, 2000). Literature bodies have well documented its efficiency on: (1) perceiving and processing the information, (2) generating the interest and motivation in learning, (3) bettering the spoken and written command of English, (4) and cultivating chances to apply the information to create something new. Yet to realize this application, the writer had to investigate the nature of each level of cognition, then found out a proper interpretation of each level rather than the novel idea of Bloom (1956) or the list of related verbs coined by Pohl (2000). Based on this interpretation, the writer built up a set of questions for each level. Apart from scanning, skimming, referring and inferring questions (divided as basic, intermediate, and advanced, scattering in all six levels), this set also includes those related to applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating. It is hoped that this set of questions would raise the instructors’ awareness of high levels of cognition in their reading-question desin and that it can serve as a refernce list during their accomplishing this job.