Higher Education and Higher Thinking Skills: from the perspective of 12 grade English textbook

Abstract
This presentation aims at analyzing reading comprehension questions’ levels of difficulty in English for Palestine 12th grade English student’s textbook in terms of their categorization according to Barrets’ reading comprehension higher thinking skills Taxonomy: the literal comprehension, reorganization, inferential, evaluation and the appreciation levels. The researcher investigates whether the questions prepare students for future reading comprehension college experience. It also seeks to identify the compatibility of the 23 reading comprehension objectives in “English for Palestine” syllabus with Barrets’ higher thinking skills Taxonomy. Through descriptive analysis, the researcher found that the largest proportion of the questions in the 12th grade textbook were literal level questions. The reorganization, inferential, and appreciation questions were under represented compared to the syllabus objectives percentages. Only the evaluation questions are compatible with higher thinking skills taxonomy as projected by the syllabus. The second question in this research is regarding the syllabus reading comprehension objectives which were found to be reasonably compatible with higher thinking skills. The researcher recommends to incorporate these findings in the student’s textbook to simulate the syllabus percentages.