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，1994; Thombury, 1996). Display questions can be defined as questions to which teachersalready know the answers (Thompson, 1994; Thombury, 1996). In addition, they seem to befavored by most teachers, as Thompson (1994) argues “teachers are one of the fewprofessional groups who routinely spend their lives asking questions to which they know theanswer...” (p. 101). These questions make any classroom discourse less communicative asKumaravadivelu (1993) argues: In theory, a communicative classroom seeks to promoteinterpretation, expression and negotiation of meaning... [Learners] should be encouraged toask for information, seek clarification，express an opinion, agree and/or disagree with peersand teachers...In reality, however, such a classroom seems to be a rarity. Research showsthat even teachers who are committed to communicative language teaching can fail to createopportunities for genuine interaction in the classroom (Kumaravadivelu, 1993，as cited inCullen，1998，p. 180).In EFL reading classes，where the students are often silent and inactive due to thereceptive nature of this particular skill, asking display questions engenders little productionon the part of the students, since the answers are in the text. These questions are usually inthe form of comprehension questions provided by the textbook itself. As a result, studentstend to just read the sentence or phrase from the text which is the specific answer to thequestion posed. The students do not have any role in the production process, instead solelyrepeating the information that is contained in the text. In reading lessons which consistmostly of display questions that interrogate students' comprehension, there are longquestion-and-answer exchanges of classic IRF type. This is the most common interactionbetween the students and the teacher in which the teacher initiates the exchange by asking aquestion, student responds and teacher follows up/gives feedback (Thombury，1996; Ellis,1985). IRF, or according to Ur (1991) "closed-ended teacher questioning，，，is an exchangewhich allows only one correct response and is sometimes cynically referred to as the “Guesswhat the teacher wants you to say” game (p. 228). In such exchanges，although studentsseem to be active participants in the classroom interaction, this type of exchange isinsufficient, resulting in minimal communicative intercourse and student productivity, sincethe students only repeat what the text has already provided as an answer.One effective way to increase oral participation in reading classes is to ask referentialquestions creating propitious circumstances enabling students to be more productive.Referential questions have no one specific answer, and are therefore used to instigategenuine communication. The purpose behind asking this type of question is to allow studentsto express opinions and exchange information (Ellis, 1994; Thompson, 1997; Thombury，1996; Richards & Lockhart，1996). Posing referential questions makes any discourse in theclassroom more natural, since in real life we do not have any need to ask questions to whichwe already know the answer, and therefore refrain from doing so. (Long & Sato，1983;Lynch, 1991). Asking students referential questions, or in other words subjecting them to acatechism in order to elicit opinion and support for arguments, will increase theirparticipation and enable them to think outside the often limited scope of the text，since asNunan (1989) suggests，“it is not inconceivable