Text-dependent questions are those that can ONLY be answered by referring back to the text.
"The Common Core State Standards expect students to use evidence from texts to present careful analyses, well-defended claims, and clear information. A central tool to help students develop these skills is text-dependent questions: questions that can only be answered by referring back to the text."
Good text-specific questions will often linger over specific phrases and sentences to ensure careful comprehension of the text—they help students see something worthwhile that they would not have seen on a more cursory reading. Typical text-dependent questions ask students to perform one or more of the following tasks:
"The Common Core State Standards expect students to use evidence from texts to present careful analyses, well-defended claims, and clear information. A central tool to help students develop these skills is text-dependent questions: questions that can only be answered by referring back to the text."
Good text-specific questions will often linger over specific phrases and sentences to ensure careful comprehension of the text—they help students see something worthwhile that they would not have seen on a more cursory reading. Typical text-dependent questions ask students to perform one or more of the following tasks:
- Analyze paragraphs on a sentence-by-sentence basis and sentences on a word-by-word basis to determine the role played by individual paragraphs, sentences, phrases, or words
- Investigate how meaning can be altered by changing key words and why an author may have chosen one word over another
- Probe each argument in persuasive text, each idea in informational text, each key detail in literary text, and observe how these build to a whole
- Examine how shifts in the direction of an argument or explanation are achieved and the impact of those shifts
- Question why authors choose to begin and end when they do
- Note and assess patterns of writing and what they achieve
- Consider what the text leaves uncertain or unstated