ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the use of questioning techniques for the purpose of directly teaching inferential reading comprehension and meta-comprehension skills to children in classroom settings. The examples are intended to illustrate that the efficacy of questioning can be doubted because the questions themselves are not explicitly related to inferential comprehension, they are not organized to cover important points in a given text, and they are not followed up with explanatory instructional interactions. The chapter explores a system explicitly depicting aspects of inferential comprehension and its application to classroom instructional settings. The motivation for developing Links was to provide a means for directly teaching inferential reading comprehension and metacomprehension skills. Despite the preliminary nature of the Links teaching approach, the outcomes are encouraging from the standpoint of attempting to assist children who have difficulties with comprehension skills, especially when viewed within the perspective of what is now available to such children in classrooms.
