Sometimes, students find it hard to read the text or words and understand them. Although it is not an easy task to comprehend the reading, it is full of fun! Incorporating reading comprehension skills in students is very important. It helps them understand the newspaper, books, stories, or more complex texts.
Reading skills have many components. And it is important to develop every component of the child’s reading ability. Reading comprehension is one of them. Many children take reading for granted, but it is a very complex and interactive process in reality. It helps in utilizing various functions of the brain.
This article is about how you can increase your reading comprehension. Read it till the end to know more about it.
Reading comprehensively means reading the passage or story by understanding its meaning. It also signifies identifying the intentions of the author behind the story. Comprehending the story makes reading more interesting, enjoyable, fun, and informative.
How to Power up Your Reading Comprehension?
To improve reading comprehension skills, here are many strategies. Like other skills, this also increases the more you practice it. Here are some strategies to improve your reading comprehension:
1. Read the words loudly:
Loud reading includes verbal and written comprehension methods. It also helps you with the processing of the words you are reading. It would be best to read the texts at a slower rate in the beginning. It helps you not only with vocabulary but also to hear them out.
2. Select your level books:
Make sure to select the books of your reading age. In this way, you will be able to read most of the difficult words without any help. If you can comprehend the meaning of the words with ease, then move to the next level of books. In this way, you can increase your level of vocabulary and reading comprehension.
3. Re-read the words to get fluency:
Sometimes, when you finish reading a story, you find out that there is not a single point you remembered. In such situations, do not hesitate to re-read them. It makes your concepts strong and helps you improve your vocabulary and grasp fluency in reading. Re-reading the text lets you memorize the content and improve your comprehension. It provides you exposure to various words and phrases and helps you get fluent over them.
4. Ask the questions related to the text you have read:
You can raise questions whenever you face a challenging situation or doubt your teachers. Please write down your queries in the notebook and search for their answers. After delivering answers, ask for some new supporting details to understand the story more distinctly. Focus on the author’s intention behind the story. And draw out some hypothetical questions from it. Then search for their answers.
5. Write the summary of your reading:
You have to summarise the story by differentiating the important points of the story and all the important information. Research proves that summarising the text improves comprehension abilities. Summarising helps you identify the most relevant text and ideas of the content. You can use diagrams or any other forms to write the summary of your reading.
6. Identify the main idea of the text:
To understand the text, this is necessary to identify its main theme. It is important to find out the big picture in your text to make it simple to understand. Target the questions like why, what, when, where, etc. If you can find the answer to these questions, then put it in your words and start to comprehend it. It helps you to sort out the details and facts of the story.
7. Use context clues:
It is a great way to understand what you are reading. It helps you read the words even if you are not good with vocabulary. By using context clues, you can deduce the main idea in the sentence. With this help, you can interpret the information in the passage.
8. Ask for help whenever needed:
If you are unclear about the passage’s information, ask for help from your friends, teachers, tutors, or experts. A helper will help you resolve your comprehensive questions. You can talk to them in a comfortable and friendly manner. They can also help you summarise the content to comprehend it more precisely.
9. Break the long text into smaller:
Break the long and difficult text into smaller sections. It will make it easy to understand them. And you can comprehend it in a better way. For example, if you have some challenging paragraphs, stop after reading one of them. Make a summary of that paragraph and then move forward with it. In this way, it will become much easier for you to verbalize and comprehend it.
10. Visualization of the text:
In this technique, you have to visualize or imagine the images of the text in your mind. And then read it. In this way, it will become better for them to comprehend them. In other words, you have to formulate the pictures in your mind according to the activities in the story. Experts suggested that students should have to imagine some fundamental resemblances compared to pictures. It makes it easy to link the text with them, and you will never intend to forget it.
11. Read by remembering the class guidelines:
When you read according to the class guidelines, guide yourself to read all the information relevant to the class. You can look for the syllabus or outline. Or you can emphasize the information delivered by the teachers. You can look for homework, assessments, or quizzes for all sorts of information. This strategy helps you comprehend the study material in the best possible way.
12. Find the view and purpose of the text:
The narrator narrates every bit of the text while keeping a purpose in his mind. And there is his point of view behind any character or his opinion about the story. To master reading comprehension skills, you need to find out the author’s purpose and point of view. You have to examine the hidden meaning of the author and understand it.
What are the Tips for Improving Reading Comprehension?
Some tips to improve your reading comprehension are given below:
1. Understand and evaluate your current reading process:
It is important to understand your current reading levels and limitations. Before improving reading comprehension, it is needed to work on these problems.
Start with the unfamiliar text from any content you find hard to read. If you cannot complete it all in a short time, then take a step back and push yourself more. In this way, you can identify your areas of improvement and strengths.
2. Work on your vocabulary:
If you recognize the meaning of a word while reading the text, it improves your ability to comprehend the story. To improve your vocabulary, you can use the following ways:
- Take an online quiz and check your comprehension level of vocabulary.
- Question yourself on words and analyze how much you can solve them.
- Read more and more to improve your comprehension ability.
- Find new words to improve your verbal and written communication skills.
- Please make a list of unknown words and check them in the dictionary.
3. Take pleasure in reading:
To upgrade your reading comprehension, you need to take an interest while reading the books. Make reading an entertaining activity rather than a must to do work. It will motivate you to get engaged with the new books and read more and more. Make it a part of your daily routine, and ultimately, you will get interested in it naturally.
FAQs about How To Improve Reading Skills
What is the importance of reading comprehension?
The importance of reading comprehension is given below
Good exercise for the mind: Reading engages many parts of your mind. While reading, you exercise comprehension and analytical abilities. It stimulates your memorizing abilities and helps you to stabilize your emotions.
Helps you improve communication skills: It helps improve your writing skills. As you can understand another language, it removes the communication barrier between people. It teaches you new words and perspectives.
Change your perspectives to look at life: Reading books have the power to change your perspective towards others and your life. It gives you new ideas to look for in your future. The character you read, you like to become one of them.
Improve your knowledge: You will get immense knowledge after reading the books. These are the best sources of information and knowledge.
Keep you calm and entertained: Reading has the power to motivate you and let you calm your emotions. It can keep you company in any phase of life. It relaxes your nerves and body. And also has the power to entertain you.
How to improve reading comprehension skills?
You have to follow the given below steps to improve your reading comprehension skills:
Grasp the study materials: This step helps you understand the study material thoroughly. You can grasp them by removing the surrounding distractions, reading with your friends, and reading loudly.
Develop reading skills: It is important to improve reading comprehension skills to improve different reading skills. For this, you have to start reading from the foundation level.
Preparing notes while reading: This step helps you understand the important points of the story. Also, this step lets you identify the difficult words for comprehension.
Purposeful reading: By this method, you get to identify the story's main idea.
What are the components of reading comprehension?
The main components of reading comprehension are given below:
To identify the main idea and key details: This component helps you identify the reasons behind the story. It helps you in gaining some fundamental skills.
To arrange passages into an ordinal series: This component helps identify the story's main ideas and key details. You need to recognize the story's chronological order and put it that way.
To answer remembered questions: After reading the passage, try to answer when, why, where, how, what, etc. It helps you perceive the information in the story. You can use highlighters and colored pens to make them easy to identify.
To make deductions or predictions: Many students find it difficult to abstract reasoning and struggle to identify the solid inference and predictions in the story. This component helps you with thinking and abstract abilities.
To identify unknown words: Looking for unknown words and vocabulary helps you in the self-assessing process. These are the structural approaches to defining a word and the most critical part of reading comprehension.
What are the advantages of reading comprehension?
The advantages of reading comprehension are given below:
Improves thinking and analytical abilities: Reading stimulates your critical thinking and analytical abilities. Sometimes, you become able to detect the next step of the problem by reading properly. In this way, you start to run your mind to solve the puzzles instantly.
Please get rid of interruptions: When you read a book, you put your whole attention on it. In this way, you become unable to get distracted because of interruptions. And improves your focus.
Master the language: It is one of the best ways to learn a new language and master it. By reading regularly, you start to understand the words. It also helps you with vocabulary skills.
Remove communication barriers: Books are a good source of starting the conversation. And they create a bond with people with ease. They provide you with multiple opportunities to discuss with others. In this way, you gain a lot of knowledge.
Keeps you grounded: It helps in learning humility. As much as you read books, you get to know their importance. They can become your best friends.
Conclusion
Although it needs a lot of time and attempts to improve reading comprehension, it is not impossible. In the dawn, it may seem like a slow and frustrating process. But eventually, you will start to enjoy it a lot. It would be best if you were patient throughout your journey of learning reading comprehension skills.
You will find that even in a small piece of text, there are a lot of words that need you to explore. Slowly, you will never know how it becomes one of your favorite hobbies to read books and comprehend them.
