This study investigated perceptions of a class of 20 first-year Japanese college students on peer questioning in cooperative reading activities. After the instructor gave an hour of interactive explanations of the reading, in which students were encouraged to interact actively with the instructor in interpreting the reading material, students were then guided through three steps: 1) individually writing questions on points in the text they found difficult to understand, 2) peer questioning in pairs/groups using those questions, and 3) writing answers to their own questions. After four sessions of such treatment, a questionnaire was administered to see if they perceived an improvement in their reading comprehension. The results suggest that students perceived peer questioning positively. They claimed that it helped them understand the content better and that it improved their speaking skills as well. Students stated that cooperative learning also helped them to discover elements in the text they would not have seen unless otherwise asked, and it raised students' metacognitive awareness.