The paper discusses high school students' attitudes towards teachers' verbal questioning behavior and assesses the relevance of students' preferences to test score gains. Data were sought for several questions. What cognitive levels of teacher verbal questioning behavior do social studies students prefer? What is the relationship between students' preferences and overall test score gains? Do students gain in achievement as measured by levels of questions corresponding to their preferences? Forty-three American history students were exposed to four treatments of questioning over four weeks. Three parallel forms of an achievement test and a preference inventory served as data sources. The test questions related directly to the objectives the treatment teachers implemented during the four weeks. Findings indicate that students did not show a preference for higher level questions and that those students who preferred their teachers to ask low-level questions performed best on tests incorporating correspondingly low-level questions. Implications of these results are that new curricular and instructional approaches must receive a degree of acceptance by students before their effectiveness can be evaluated and that students' reactions to teachers' use of higher, cognitive-level questions is more positive in theory than practice. (Author/DB)