Strategies to Improve Reading Comprehension Skills
It is crucial to have strong reading comprehension skills. These skills will not only help you in scoring well in your aptitude tests, but they will also enable you to understand and analyze your college related course material. Research shows that most of the students struggle with reading comprehensions because they don’t read on a regular basis. However, there are a few simple strategies that you can implement to improve your comprehension skills.
1) Focus: We all have experienced situations when we keep reading a particular passage repeatedly but are not able to comprehend it. The problem worsens when the topic doesn’t captivate our interest. This mainly happens because of distractions around us. We are not able to focus completely on the passage, which in turn adversely impacts our ability to understand the text. Thus when reading, try to minimize distractions and focus completely on text. One way to do this is to make a summary of every paragraph that you read. However, the summary should not be too long. It should be of a sentence only. Otherwise, it will take up most of your time and then you will have to rush through the questions, which is not advisable.
2) Improve Your Vocabulary: It becomes harder to understand the passage if it contains unfamiliar words. Though you can use contextual clues to understand the meaning of those unfamiliar words, it is always better to know the exact meaning of such words. Thus, whenever you come across words that are not familiar, you should look up their meaning and should use those words when conversing with your teachers or when writing your assignments.
3) Look for the Main Idea: When reading a passage, you should actively attempt to find out the author’s purpose behind writing that passage. This way you will be able to decipher the main idea of the passage. This will make it easier for you to understand the passage because then you will be constantly asking yourself how a particular point relates to the main idea.
4) Come up with Questions: To ensure you are constantly focused on what you are reading, it is a good idea to actively engage with the text. In order to do this, you should be constantly coming up with questions, for example, how are the two characters related to each other, is there any theme of the topic, what is the writer’s stance on a particular issue etc. This will improve your overall understanding of the passage.
5) Read for Fun: The most effective way to improve your reading comprehensions skills is to read on a daily basis. However, you will only do this on a consistent basis, if you truly enjoy reading. Therefore, it is important to find out the subject area that interests you the most. It can be anything, from sports to politics. Since that interests you, it is likely that you are going to continue reading on it. You can also start by reading texts that are slightly below your age or your grade level. You will be able to understand those more easily and will thus be encouraged to read further.
Improving reading comprehension skills takes time and requires consistent efforts. You should be patient and should not be too hard on yourself. Don’t get frustrated if your progress is slow. Just keep reading consistently and you will eventually get there.
