Answering Questions from Oceanography Texts: Learner, Task and Text Characteristics

摘要

Seven college students enrolled in a college-level introductory oceanography course read and answered questions on two selections drawn from their textbook in the course. Using verbal protocol procedures, three nonnative English speakers and four native English speakers described what they were doing to answer the questions. Students also varied in level of expertise based on their backgrounds in related science courses. The questions varied in terms of their relationship to the text and the type of processing required to answer them. A model of question answering from academic texts is proposed and this model guided protocol analysis. Solution strategies were abstracted from the protocols and indicated predicted effects of question type on difficulty and on solution strategies. Differences between individuals were related to domain expertise and to language background.