HOTS for reading

In many EFL classrooms, reading lessons and materials are organised around three familiar stages: pre-reading (activating background knowledge, introducing key vocabulary and predicting content), during reading (checking predictions, guiding comprehension and locating information) and post-reading (reviewing understanding, summarising key points and extending knowledge) (Grabe & Stoller, 2013). While this three-stage framework provides a useful means of teaching reading, in practice, teachers and textbooks often emphasise activities that remain at the lower-order levels of thinking. For example, activities may ask learners to recall details, identify main ideas or match vocabulary, but rarely push students towards higher-order thinking. Recent studies across Asia confirm the tendency of classroom materials and teacher-made questions to focus on remembering and understanding (Laila & Fitriyah, 2022; Le et al., 2024; Liu & Puteh, 2025; Mukhlis et al., 2023). As a result, learners may become adept at locating and comprehending information in a text but less confident in questioning, critiquing or synthesising what they have read. The purpose of this short paper is to outline the distinction between lower- and higher-order thinking skills (LOTS and HOTS) and to demonstrate how teachers can integrate HOTS activities into their reading classes, especially at the post-reading stage.

What are LOTS and HOTS?

Created by Bloom (1956) and revised by Anderson & Krathwohl (2001), the taxonomy of educational objectives provides a framework for ranking cognitive skills. Lower-order thinking skills (LOTS) are foundational skills that involve basic processes such as remembering, understanding and applying information.

1 Remembering

Definition: the ability to recall facts, details or information from a text

Examples:

• Recalling details: Where did the story take place? What is the main character’s name?
• Listing information: What three healthy foods are mentioned in the article? What three unhealthy foods are mentioned in the article?
• Identifying facts: According to the article, what is the definition of climate change? When did the event in the article happen?

2 Understanding

Definition: the ability to grasp the meaning of information by interpreting, explaining or summarising

Examples:

• Explaining ideas: Why did the character feel upset in the story? How does the author explain the solution to the problem in the text?
• Interpreting meaning: What did the author mean by the phrase ‘a turning point’ in paragraph 3? In the sentence ‘She finally reached the top’, what does ‘the top’ mean?
• Summarising: Can you retell the story in three or four sentences? Write a short summary of the article in your own words.

3 Applying

Definition: the ability to use information from a text in new situations or apply knowledge to solve problems

Examples:

• Using instructions: Read a short recipe and make a shopping list of the ingredients needed to make the dish. Follow the steps in the text to draw a simple picture.
• Transferring information: Using the information from an article on healthy living, what advice would you give a friend who eats too much junk food? After reading an article about saving water, what can you do at home to help?
• Solving problems: The character in the story missed the bus to get to an important meeting. Based on what you read, what should she do next? The article gives tips for travelling safely. How would you use them if you visited another country?

Higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) require learners to go beyond simply recalling or understanding the information. Instead, they must break down ideas, synthesise information across texts, make judgements and produce something new. In this way, HOTS activities in the reading classroom encourage learners to engage more critically and creatively with texts by asking them to compare, critique and transform what they have read. HOTS involve more complex cognitive processes, namely: analysing, evaluating and creating.

4 Analysing

Definition: the ability to break down information into parts and understand how they relate to one another

Examples:

• Comparing and contrasting: How is the city in the article similar to the place you live? How is it different?
• Identifying cause and effect: What three things caused the problem in the story? What happened as a result of the boy’s behaviour?
• Examining structure: How is the article organised? What is the purpose of each section?

5 Evaluating

Definition: the ability to make judgements about information in a text and support these judgements with valid reasons

Examples:

• Judging reliability: Do you think the article gives reliable information? Why or why not? Does the writer give enough evidence to support her argument? Give reasons for your answer.
• Assessing actions: Were the characters’ actions fair? Why or why not? Do you think the solution given by the author will be effective? Give reasons for your answer.
• Critiquing arguments: Do you agree with the author’s opinion? What reasons can you give to oppose this view?

6 Creating

Definition: the ability to combine ideas to produce something new or propose alternatives

Examples:

• Inventing endings: Write a new ending for the story. Why did you choose that ending? How is it different from the original?
• Generating questions and ideas: Imagine you are a journalist and you want to interview the character in the story. What questions would you ask? After reading the article, think of different ways you can help solve the problem.
• Transforming information: Make a poster, timeline or infographic to show the key information in the article. Add two or three new ideas and explain your work to your classmates.

From theory to practice: a reading example

To further illustrate how LOTS and HOTS can be applied in a lesson, this section provides a short reading passage at the B1 level, together with example activities. The first set of tasks demonstrates how lower-order skills are often used by teachers to check learner comprehension. The second set shows how the same text can be extended to engage learners in higher-order skills, particularly during the post-reading stage.

The following are examples of during reading or post-reading activities that focus only on LOTS. They check whether students can remember details, understand the meaning of ideas and apply information in simple ways. While these tasks are useful for building comprehension and ensuring learners have grasped the basics of the text, they do not push students to think critically or creatively about what they have read.

Remembering: true or false statements

Task: Provide students with a series of statements about the text. Students must determine whether each statement is true or false based on their memory of the reading.

Example statements:

• Teamwork allows people to share ideas and use different skills. (True)
• The reading passage says that teamwork is not necessary in sports. (False)

Understanding: summarising key ideas

Task: Ask students to work in pairs to summarise a section of the passage in one or two sentences, using their own words.

Example instructions:

• Summarise the first paragraph: What does the writer say teamwork helps people to do?
• Summarise the second paragraph: Why does the writer say good teamwork does not just happen?

Applying: connecting the reading to learners’ lives

Task: Ask students to write or discuss short examples of how ideas from the text relate to or could be used in their own experiences.

Example questions:

• Think of a time you worked on a group project. How did teamwork help you?
• Choose one quality of teamwork (communication, respect, listening). Write or discuss one way you could use this quality in your daily life.

The next set of activities provides examples that go beyond basic comprehension and encourage students to think more deeply about the reading. The activities focus on HOTS and help learners compare ideas, make judgements and produce something new. These activities can be utilised at the post-reading stage of the reading lesson.

Analysing: discussing actions that build teamwork

Task: In the passage, teamwork is described as people sharing ideas, using different skills and supporting each other. Ask students to break down these actions and explain how they connect to the success of teamwork. Then, extend by inviting them to suggest other actions that might also be important.

Example questions:

• How does sharing ideas help a team? How does supporting each other help?
• How are these actions connected? Do they work together in some way?
• Can you think of other actions that would help teamwork?

Evaluating: debate teamwork versus individual work

Task: Organise a debate where students are divided into two groups. One group argues that teamwork is more effective than individual work, while the other argues the opposite. Give time for students to prepare their points. Each side should use examples from the reading passage and their own experiences to support their ideas. Put two students from each side together to debate, then allocate time for their discussion. Afterwards, ask each group to decide which side presented the stronger arguments and why.

Example instructions:

• Group 1: Work together to list reasons why teamwork is more effective than individual work. Where possible, use examples from the reading passage and your own experiences to support your arguments.
• Group 2: Work together to list why individual work is more effective than teamwork. Where possible, use examples from the reading passage and your own experiences to support your arguments.

Creating: designing a ‘teamwork challenge’ poster

Task: In small groups, students design a short activity that requires them to practise teamwork (e.g. building the tallest free-standing tower using only paper and tape; blindfolding one another and then listening to instructions to complete a simple puzzle; deciding what five objects would be most important to survive on a desert island). They should decide the goal of their challenge, describe the steps needed to complete it and explain how good teamwork (sharing ideas, using different skills, supporting others) can help them succeed. Encourage groups to present their ideas to the class using a simple poster.

Example instructions:

• Work in small groups to design a classroom game or group task that requires teamwork to complete it. What is the goal? What must each person do?
• Create a poster to show how your challenge promotes teamwork. Explain how your ideas connect to the reading passage. Present your poster to different groups in the class.

Conclusion

This article has argued that teachers and textbook materials can often overlook activities that promote higher-order thinking in the reading classroom. Instead, they may favour lower-order questions that focus mainly on comprehension. The article has outlined the differences between lower- and higher-order thinking skills and provided sample tasks and questions that learners may be asked in a reading lesson. In particular, it has illustrated how the post-reading stage offers valuable opportunities to push learners towards higher-order thinking through activities that encourage analysing, evaluating and creating.

Regardless of learners’ age or level, it is possible to design reading activities that help them go beyond the text and develop higher cognitive skills. If I may be so bold, I invite you to reflect on your own practice. Examine the reading materials you use and the questions you ask your students in the reading classroom. Think to yourself: Do my post-reading activities help my learners to develop HOTS or do they keep them at the level of LOTS?. If the answer is LOTS, try experimenting in your next lesson with a post-reading analysing, evaluating or creating task. By doing so, your learners can begin to develop, quite literally, the HOTS for reading.

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