For ELA, reading and ESL teachers

Reading Comprehension Question Generator That Writes Passage Questions and an Answer Key From Any PDF

Upload the story, article, or chapter your class is reading. Get literal, inference, vocabulary, and open ended questions that can only be answered from that text, with the answers and a printable key.

Works with PDF, Word, PowerPoint, text files and photos of book pages. Your files stay private to your account.

Upload a reading passage and generate comprehension questions

Click to upload or drag and drop

PDF, DOCX, PPTX, TXT, JPG, JPEG, PNG, HEIC, ODP, ODT, BMP, or TIFF

Up to 10 files at once, 50 MB each, merged into one quiz within the free page limit

Please wait, your quiz is being created...

Uploading...

A reading comprehension question generator reads a passage you supply and writes questions that can only be answered from that passage, along with the correct answers. PDFQuiz accepts the passage as a PDF, Word file, slide deck, plain text, or a photo of the page, up to ten files at once, and returns multiple choice, true or false, fill in the blank, matching, and open ended questions. Every item carries its answer and an optional explanation, and paid plans export the student sheet and the answer key as separate PDF or Word files.

What the generator writes from one passage

Comprehension is not one skill, so a good question set is not one question type. Here is how the question types map onto the reading skills most US teachers assess, and what each one is good at catching.

Reading skill Best question type What it shows you
Literal recallMultiple choice, true or falseDid the student actually read the whole text, not just the first page
Vocabulary in contextFill in the blank, matchingCan they work out a word from the sentence around it
InferenceMultiple choice with explanationCan they read what the author implies, such as a character's motive
Main idea and author's purposeOpen endedCan they summarize and defend a reading in their own words
Sequence and structureMatching, true or falseDo they know what happened in what order, and how the text is organized

The questions are generated across the beginning, middle, and end of the text, so a student who skimmed the opening paragraph will not pass on luck. The number of questions is split evenly across the types you switch on. If you want a set that leans hard on one skill, generate it with only that type selected, or on the top plan add a custom instruction such as "focus on inference questions about the second half of the story."

English teacher marking a printed reading passage at her classroom desk

Text-dependent by design

The Common Core reading anchor standard asks students to read closely and cite textual evidence. Questions generated only from the uploaded passage are text-dependent by construction: background knowledge alone will not answer them.

Files per upload
Up to 10
Question types
6
Answer key
Separate file
Scanned pages
OCR
Instructional coach reviewing a highlighted article next to a printed question sheet

From passage to printed question set in four steps

Most teachers spend more time reading the result than making it.

  1. 1

    Upload the passage

    A short story, a news article, a textbook chapter, a released state test passage, or phone photos of the pages of the novel you are teaching.

  2. 2

    Choose the question mix

    Switch on the types you want, set how many questions, pick a difficulty, and choose whether each answer gets an explanation.

  3. 3

    Read and trim

    Delete the item you would not ask, regenerate if you want a different angle, and keep the ones that hit the part of the text you are teaching.

  4. 4

    Print or share

    Export the student sheet and the answer key as separate PDF or Word files, or send the class a link to an online quiz that grades itself.

PDFQuiz vs other reading comprehension question generators

Several tools do this job and they are built for different teachers. This table is based on what each vendor publishes on its own tool page. Where a vendor does not publish something, we say so instead of guessing, and we say where each one beats us.

  PDFQuiz Monsha Cathoven QuestionWell Writing by hand
Passage input PDF, Word, PowerPoint, text, photos, up to 10 files PDFs, Word, images, Google Drive, URLs, YouTube Pasted English passage Not stated on its homepage Any text you have read
Question types Multiple choice, multiple answer, true or false, fill in the blank, matching, open ended Multiple choice, fill in the blank, true or false, short answer, open ended, essay Multiple choice, short answer, inference Multiple choice with distractors, vocabulary Whatever you write
Leveling controls Overall difficulty, custom instruction on the top plan Bloom's, DOK, Lexile and grade level Calibrated to the passage's reading level Standards alignment Full control
Answer key Separate PDF or Word file, explanations per answer Answers included Answer key included Answers included You write it too
Where it goes next Printable PDF and Word, self-grading online quiz link, CSV and JSON, Anki Google Docs, Forms, Slides, PDF, DOCX, Kahoot, Quizizz, Quizlet Copy or print 22+ tools including Kahoot, Blooket, Canvas, Google Forms Your own document
Price See the pricing page Not shown on its tool page Free for teachers with a daily usage allowance Not shown on its homepage Your evenings

Where the others win

If your district asks you to tag every question to a DOK level or a Lexile band, Monsha is built around those frameworks and we are not. If you live inside Blooket or Canvas and want one-click export to 22 platforms, QuestionWell covers more destinations than we do. If you teach English learners and only ever paste a single short passage, Cathoven's free daily allowance may be all you need.

Where PDFQuiz wins

When the reading lives in files rather than on a web page: a 40 page scanned chapter, a stack of released test passages, photos of a novel. You upload them as they are, get six question types from the whole text, and print the student sheet and the key as two clean documents. The same set can go out as a self-grading link, so you are not retyping anything into a form.

Who uses a reading comprehension question generator

Anyone who assigns reading every week and needs to check it was understood, not just opened.

Teacher lesson planning with a novel, printed answer key and laptop

Middle and high school ELA teachers

A chapter check for every chapter of the class novel, built the night before instead of the weekend before. Run the same chapter twice for two versions of the quiz.

Reading specialists and interventionists

Short leveled passages with a handful of literal and inference questions each, so progress shows up in the gradebook and not just in your notes.

ESL and adult education instructors

Turn a news article or a workplace document into vocabulary and comprehension questions in English, or generate the set in the learner's language when that helps.

Science and social studies teachers

Reading in the content areas is reading too. Upload a primary source or a textbook section and check understanding before the discussion, not after it.

Test prep tutors

Extra passage practice in the shape of the reading sections on the SAT, ACT, or ACCUPLACER practice tests, generated from passages you choose.

Homeschool parents

A comprehension check for each book on the reading list, with the answer key kept separate so the student cannot peek at it.

How to get a better question set out of any passage

Upload the text, not a summary

Inference questions need the details a summary throws away. Give the generator the full passage and the questions get sharper.

One reading per set

Ten pages of one story makes a better check than three unrelated articles mixed together. Generate one set per text and combine them later if you need to.

Keep the open ended item

Multiple choice tells you who read it. One open ended question about the author's purpose tells you who understood it, and it is the hardest one for a student to look up.

Reading comprehension question generator questions, answered

How do I use AI to generate reading comprehension questions?
Upload the passage, article, or chapter as a PDF, Word file, or photo of the page, pick the question types and how many you want, and generate. The AI reads only the text you gave it, so every question can be answered from the passage. Read the set once before class, delete anything off target, and regenerate if you want a different mix.
Can AI generate reading comprehension questions?
Yes. Current models write solid literal recall, vocabulary in context, main idea, and inference questions from a passage, and they add answers and short explanations. Where they need a teacher is emphasis: the AI does not know which paragraph your standard targets this week. Treat the output as a strong first draft that you trim, not a finished test you never read.
What are the different types of reading comprehension questions?
Most teacher frameworks sort them into levels. Literal questions ask what the text states directly. Inferential questions ask what the text implies, such as a character's motive. Evaluative questions ask the reader to judge the text, for example whether an argument holds up. Many teachers add vocabulary in context and text structure questions as separate categories.
Do the reading comprehension questions come with answers?
Yes. Every question is generated with its correct answer, and you can switch on a short explanation that points back to the part of the passage the answer comes from. On paid plans the answer key exports as its own PDF or Word document, separate from the student question sheet, so you can print one and keep the other.
Can I make reading comprehension questions from a PDF?
Yes, and that is the main input. Upload a PDF of a short story, a news article, a textbook chapter, or a released state test passage. Scanned pages work too once you switch on OCR. You can also upload Word, PowerPoint, plain text, and photos of book pages, up to ten files at once.
How accurate are AI-generated reading comprehension questions?
Accurate enough to save hours, not accurate enough to skip a read-through. The common failure is a distractor that is also defensible from the text, which a careful student will argue with. Reading through 20 generated questions is a few minutes of work. Writing 20 good ones from a blank page is an evening.
Can I control the difficulty or reading level of the questions?
You set an overall difficulty and choose the question types, which changes how much each item asks of the reader. On the top plan you can add a custom instruction, for example to focus on inference questions about one section. There is no Lexile or DOK selector, so if you need questions tagged to those frameworks, a tool built around them may suit you better.
Can I turn the questions into a Google Form or a Kahoot?
Yes, with one extra step. Export the questions as Word, PDF, or tab-separated text, then paste them into a Google Form quiz or the Kahoot spreadsheet template. Both routes are explained step by step on our PDF to Google Form and PDF to Kahoot pages. You can also share the quiz as an online link that grades itself.

Related tools for reading teachers

Quiz a whole chapter with the textbook to quiz generator, build grammar and vocabulary checks with the English quiz maker, or write discussion prompts with the open ended question generator. To run the questions as a game or a form, follow the PDF to Kahoot or PDF to Google Form walkthrough, and if you only need the key, the answer key generator does that on its own.

Generate comprehension questions for this week's reading

Upload the passage, pick the question types, and print the student sheet and the answer key as two separate files.

Create your account