Comprehension is an important aspect of reading. Reading comprehension is the ability to understand or comprehend what you are reading. We all know the importance of reading and the educational benefits it has such as improvement in speech, vocabulary, and writing. By being able to comprehend what we are reading, we can extract the meaning from the text and understand it better. In this article, we will explore the strategies to improve reading comprehension.
1. Developing vocabulary skills
Vocabulary plays a vital role in understanding a text and for reading with fluency. Knowing the words, you read can help in improving your ability to comprehend the text more easily. In order to improve vocabulary, one can take online quizzes to assess your current knowledge of the vocabulary understanding, read as much as possible to improve your ability to guess what a word means, make a list of all the new words you come across and look up for their meaning in the dictionary.
2. Use summarizing techniques
Although it may seem tedious at first, summarizing techniques is always a great idea as it helps in finding and bringing the key ideas together. It trains an individual to automatically synthesize information as they read. It also helps in remembering better what you have read for a longer period.
3. Questioning
Asking questions on what you have read is one of the most amazing ways to help improve your reading comprehension as it allows you to become more involved in the text. It can also help in broadening your overall understanding of what you are reading as it enables you to identify the themes and motifs of the text. The more specific questions you have, the more you will gain a deeper insight into the meaning of the text.
4. Break up reading into smaller sections
If you are reading a challenging lengthy text then consider breaking into smaller parts to help you understand better. You could read three paragraphs, pause and then quickly summarize what you read in your mind; in this way you will get a better chance to comprehend the information in the text. Moreover, it will be less overwhelming.
5. Using context clues
Using context clues is a good way to understand what you are reading even if you are not familiar with new vocabulary being used. To use context clues, your focus should always be on the ideas in a sentence or on the key phrases. You can also look for any synonyms or antonyms being used for the words that you are not familiar with.
