A Comparative Evaluation of Reading Comprehension Questions in English Textbooks: Student Books Versus Workbooks

The current study aimed to evaluate the post-reading comprehension questions and task types in “English for Schools” series including three student books and their accompanying workbooks in light of Freeman’s taxonomy. To this end, the reading comprehension questions following 10 reading passages in the student books and 10 ones in the workbooks were scrutinized and classified. The results revealed that Content questions were the most dominant type in all the student books and workbooks except for Vision 3 in which Language questions were the most frequent of all. The results also showed that the highest frequency belonged to Explicit and Form in student books and Explicit and Implicit, Form, and Personal Response in workbooks. The results of the Kruskal Wallis test of independent samples indicated a significant difference in terms of Affect type across the student books and workbooks. The findings raise the material developers’ awareness of the existing post-reading comprehension questions to supplement the books with the missing types and take a comprehensive approach to developing the learners’ reading skills.