What types of questions should be used to assess reading comprehension from printed materials?

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Assessing reading comprehension from printed materials works best when you use passage-based questions that probe several levels of understanding. Include literal questions that check explicit facts stated in the text, inferential questions that require reading between the lines and drawing conclusions from clues, evaluative questions that invite judgment about the text or its arguments, paraphrase prompts that ask students to restate ideas in their own words to show they grasp the meaning, and vocabulary checks that link word meanings to their use in the passage with text evidence. This mix engages different cognitive skills—finding exact details, making inferences, evaluating quality, and demonstrating practical language understanding—while grounding answers in the text itself. Relying only on yes/no questions tends to miss deeper comprehension and can encourage guesswork, while using summaries alone may not verify understanding of specific details or evidence.