How to improve reading comprehension

Reading comprehension tips

What is reading comprehension?

Reading comprehension is the ability to read a text, process it and understand its meaning. It's an active process that takes place before, during and after you read sth.

There are 2 main components of reading comprehension:

VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE

TEXT COMPREHENSION

vs

being able to to construct meaning and retrieve information from a text

being able to understand the meaning of the words and sentences in a text

Tips to improve your reading comprehension skills

Self-monitoring & Metacognition

Improve your vocabulary

Look for the main idea / Use context clues

Answering questions

Write a summary

READING SUB-SKILLS

SKIMMING or READING FOR GIST

EXTENSIVE READING

INTENSIVE READING

SCANNING

Reading quickly in order to locate and collect information

Reading in detail and several times with specific learning aims

General meaning or purpose of a text

Reading for pleasure

READING PURPOSES

Text as springboard for production

Text as a vehicle for information

Text as a linguistic object

The content / information of a text is more important than the form (focus on the overall meaning of the text).

A text is used for language analysis (grammar or lexis to focus on).

A text is used as a stimulus for a production activity (a writing or or a speaking activity).

Reading...

WHY SHOULD YOU READ?

Enjoy your reading!

Got an idea?

Metacognition can be defined as “thinking about thinking". Good readers use metacognitive strategies to think about and have control over their reading. Before reading, they might clarify their purpose for reading and preview the text. During reading, they might monitor their understanding, adjusting their reading speed to fit the difficulty of the text and “fixing” any comprehension problems they have. After reading, they check their understanding.

You may use several comprehension monitoring strategies:

• Identify where the difficulty occurs (I don’t understand the 2nd paragraph on page 76);
• Identify what the difficulty is (I don’t get what the author means when she says...);
• Restate the difficult sentence or passage in your own words;
• Look back through the text;
• Look forward in the text for information that might help you to resolve the difficulty.

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Summarizing requires you to determine what is important in what you are reading and to put it into your own words. Summarizing helps you to:

• Identify or generate main ideas;
• Connect the main or central ideas;
• Eliminate unnecessary information;
• Remember what you read.

Questions guide you and give you a purpose for reading; focus your attention on what you are to learn and help you to think actively and to monitor your comprehension as you read. The information in a text can be explicit (they are directly stated in the text), implicit (they are suggested but not directly expressed in the text) or information entirely from your own background knowledge. There are four different types of questions: 1 RIGHT THERE: questions found right in the text that ask you to find the one right answer located in one place as a word or a sentence in the passage; 2 THINK & SEARCH: questions based on the recall of facts that can be found directly in the text. Answers are found in more than one place, thus requiring you to think and search through the passage to find the answer. 3 AUTHOR & YOU: questions require you to use what you already know, with what you have learnt from reading the text. You must understand the text and relate it to your prior knowledge before answering the question. Example: How do think Jim felt when he found Mike? Answer: I think that Jim felt happy because he had not seen Mike in a long time. I feel happy when I get to see my friend who lives far away. 4 ON YOUR OWN: questions are answered based on your prior knowledge and experiences. Reading the text may not be helpful to you when answering this type of question (How would you feel if ...?)

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Study some key phrases or key vocabulary before starting the proper reading. Your knowledge on a given topic also activates your knowledge of the world of the context and co-text.

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Got an idea?

Use this space to add awesome interactivity. Include text, images, videos, tables, PDFs... even interactive questions! Premium tip: Get information on how your audience interacts with your creation:

• Visit the Analytics settings;
• Activate user tracking;
• Let the communication flow!

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Try to identify the main idea of the text or of a paragraph can give you a better comprehension of what the author is trying to convey (N.B.: the title can help you!).Nothing can disturb your reading more, and confuse you more, than running into one unfamiliar word after another. So if you don’t know all the vocabulary being used in the text, you can use context clues (hints and extra information in a sentence or passage that help you understand the meaning of an unknown word or of a new word). To use context clues, you can focus on the key phrases and deduce the main idea of a sentence or paragraph based on this information. You can also look for nearby words that are synonyms or antonyms of the word you don’t know.