According to the latest research, many people find reading comprehension very difficult. The fact is that we can be quite dull at it and we often make mistakes. We’ve gathered the best ways to improve reading comprehension and give you some examples of what you can do to improve your reading skills.
How to Improve Reading Comprehension
- Improve Your Vocabulary
- Read for Pleasure
- Come up with questions about the text you are reading
- Take notes or highlight important concepts
- Look for the main idea
- Break up the reading into smaller sections
- Read aloud
1. Improve Your Vocabulary
If you have the chance to use a dictionary, do it. Take advantage of the fact that a dictionary gives definitions and facts simultaneously in one place so when we read through that information, much more gets stored away into our brain for good. Use an online pocket-sized dictionary or even your smartphone.
2. Read for Pleasure
Reading for pleasure can’t be directly associated with improving your vocabulary, but it does carry on into the next section of researching and reading what you need to improve your skills. Reading for pleasure can be the basis of building vocabulary. Take up a subject you feel passionate about, or that entertains you, and see how many books you can read by just researching different subjects related to your interests.
3. Come up with Questions about the Text You are Reading
For example:
What does the writer feel about this topic?
How do they connect their thoughts together for your reading pleasure?
How do they use words and phrases that contain an adjective or adverbs?
Try to guess answers based on the text’s style of language. What is their tone, mood, and setting in respect to how you guessed it prior? Example: “The boy was scared by a wicked army of monsters” might be interpreted as fear from something (monster), which rhyme with readers hearing about scary.
4. Take Notes or Highlight Important Concepts
Reading without taking notes or highlighting important, critical information will force you to remember everything in the book by storing them in your memory. It is not just a good way of retaining what was said but also helps us better understand and apply some concepts we read about into our lives when it comes time for analyzing those ideas more thoroughly.
5. Look for the Main Idea
Your brain reads everything methodically in a particular sequence, so your reading comprehension is greatly developed when it comes to understanding the idea of what that book has to say. You should look for the main ideas within their parts and make sure they sound convincing like an expert on whatever subject you are researching. Make sure to pay attention to details when reading.
6. Break up the Reading into Smaller Sections
Reading at hand is a big task. The main reason is that the harder you look at information, the more complex it gets. To combat this problem, break up your reading into smaller chunks to figure out how much time is being wasted on one section of text.
7. Read Aloud
Reading aloud is not only good for our comprehension skills, but they also develop vocabulary. Reading out loud helps us in building the sentence that we are reading and it serves as a great way to test your understanding of what you have just finished going through.
Reading Comprehension Skills
Because English reading comprehension is a skill that improves like any other, you can improve your understanding by putting it into practice and developing a game plan. If you have a good grasp of the topics and concepts, you’ll be much better equipped to comprehend the material that is presented. Ultimately this will give your brain more information from which it can take in new information with ease.
Do you know that listening is a skill?
The importance of vocabulary
One of the best ways to improve reading comprehension is by learning new words. The more that you learn, the faster you’ll be able to read and understand what others are saying or writing about. You can also use articles, starting off with simple ones like ‘a book’ and progressing onto more complicated ones, such as ‘a dictionary’. It is important to use many different words when learning new vocabulary and reinforce them by reading them with sarcasm or irony.
Essential Components of Reading
The importance of understanding what you read or write is paramount for the quality and quantity of your information taken. Therefore, it is important to have a good grasp on certain aspects that are essential to reading comprehension. When combing through this content you will find several items listed below that are very significant in the way you decipher the information presented. Understanding these basic components will ensure that your comprehension of any content is better than before taking this quiz, so get ready to test yourself on what all of us take for granted out eye-witness reality.
Making Inferences
When analyzing text, you should make inferences by interpreting what has been said. Making the right kind of inference will help in being able to comprehend this material much better than if you had just read it cover to cover when trying out different types of readings. For example when reading the sentences, ‘If you do not bring your smartphone in the classroom, I will confiscate it or ‘The teacher said that if my book is left packed on the table when she arrives for class tomorrow morning…’ you can make an inference to show what is taking place in certain situations.
Comprehension strategies
There are reading comprehension strategies:
- There are a few strategies you can use to enhance your comprehension including highlighting, making notes, and looking up the definition of words in context.
- There is also an app that helps with summarizing lengthy texts composed by taking notice of important ideas or supporting evidence such as synonyms found within the document.
- The ability to read and interpret texts critically is an important starting point for anyone intending to go on and study literature. Reading influential authors, print media or publicly available internet sources are all crucial aspects in understanding the more complicated material that some students will be exposed to.
- When you have to look up a word in the dictionary it’s important that your understanding of what has been written is enhanced. Make sure you check for quotations and paraphrased evidence before making an informed decision about whether or not this particular word should be included within the list of definitions you have just created.
- Studies show that using memory and imagination can help students achieve better results than simply reading the text.
What are graphic organizers?
Graphic organizers are different ways to organize text for students to aid in understanding information. They can be used successfully by any student, whether the student has difficulty reading or comprehending because of their disabilities.
Types of graphic organizers are just one essential method to aid learning. Other effective methods include repetition, non-verbal language clues, instant recall questions for students who have difficulties reading or comprehending texts and those that do not.
Types of graphic organizers
- Illustrations: Venn diagrams, timelines.
- Postscript boxes: illustrate relationships between two or more topics.
- Concept Maps: organize the main points of a text.
- Flow chart: illustrate the order of what happens in a text.
Own words
Though only used in a limited number of words, own words can help improve reading comprehension. It is an extremely useful skill to have when you are reading something out loud or when your teacher assigns this task.
Main idea
The main idea of a text refers to the most important information in it. It is made up of supporting details and explanations, but really only one topic or theme is being emphasized.
In some texts, the main idea is found right away as it appears in bold. In other texts, a reader can occasionally find a big red “main idea” button on the top of the first page that states what information they should focus on first to gain an understanding of the text.
Sometimes, the main idea can be difficult to find because of all the information being presented. Other times it is easy to find but may not give you a comprehensive understanding of what exactly you reading about if that is what you are looking for in your readings.
FAQs
1- How can I increase my reading comprehension?
The most important thing to remember is that reading comprehension increases with practice. Another way is to listen with an ear for the main idea of every paragraph or sentence in a text and try not to skip around because different parts might be giving it away.
2- What causes poor comprehension?
No one is completely good at reading comprehension, nor are they bad at it. Most individuals have strengths and weaknesses. Some people may have trouble configuring what the author said in their heads before actually writing down what he/she meant to say on paper or into a recording device. People with appropriate visual-spatial skills can sometimes comprehend information better than individuals without.
3- How to help an adult begin to improve their reading?
The first thing would be to try any method of support you know the patient will understand and appreciate. If there was a time period when reading comprehension wasn’t greatly improved before, try not to look for improvement overnight unless it is very drastic. For an adult who has been struggling with this skill for some time, it may be best to involve the patient in all types of reading.
4- How to help a kid begin to improve their reading?
There are numerous things that the child can do to work on their reading comprehension. First is bringing vocabulary words or situations they might remember back into everyday life (such as using them in context instead of trying to teach only new words).
In short, reading comprehension is not an innate skill. Reading comprehension is a skill that can be improved with the right methods and the right amount of time. You have to know that some people can be perfect with reading comprehension and some may have a harder time than others. It depends on an individual’s strengths and weaknesses as well as their age group and language level, etc.