Reading Comprehension

One of the basic exercises for beginning meditation is to close your eyes and focus on your breath. Think only about how the air comes into your lungs through your nose, and goes out from your lungs through your nose. Try this for 5 minutes now.

If you’re one of the over achievers from the baby boom generation, odds are, you couldn’t focus exclusively on your breath. Did thoughts about tomorrow’s schedule creep in? Bills coming due? The weekend? Visiting your parents? Vacation plans? Conversations with co-workers? Arguments with your spouse? Sports schedule for your kids? Dinner plans? Food for breakfast? Grocery lists? The list is endless.

Reading comprehension for beginners is exploring new territory. They don’t have a good frame of reference or context. They must not only develop skills for forming words with letters, then sentences with words, but also give the words and sentences meaning.

One technique with new readers is to put the reading passage into context before they begin. All reading comprehension skills can benefit by asking the child questions as they read.

For example, what is the title to the reading passage? If the title is “ Jimmy Goes to the Zoo”, you might ask the child: Have you ever been to the zoo? What kind of animals do you think Jimmy will see at the zoo? What was your favorite animal at the zoo?

Remember that the purpose of reading is to transfer the thoughts and ideas from paper to your mind. The better your vocabulary, and general knowledge, the easier the transfer process is. Have you ever read a technical manual for something you know nothing about? It was slow reading wasn’t it? This is partially because you have no prior knowledge of the subject, so there’s more time and effort spent on putting words into context or building a schema.

That said, here are some additional techniques for more experienced readers to improve reading comprehension.

1. Get the lay of the land. Before reading a passage, chapter or book, look over the index, headlines and sub headlines. What does this tell you about what you are preparing to read. This will place your reading into context.
2. If there is an introduction and conclusion paragraph, read those first, and seek out clues for what the passage will discuss.
3. Read any bold text, and look over any diagrams or illustrations. You don’t have to completely understand the diagrams yet, but they give clues on what will be discussed in the passage.
4. Ask yourself “Why am I reading this passage?” Does the passage reinforce a lecture? What was the lecture about?
5. This really isn’t a technique, but do all of your reading only when you are completely awake and focused. We sometimes feel we must push on to feel productive, but there’s nothing more frustrating than to read and not remember anything about what you just read.
6. Constantly evaluate whether you are retaining the information you are reading. If you run into unfamiliar words, look it up immediately. It’s easier to understand the passage the first time through, than to be forced to read it a second or third time and then end up having to look up meanings anyway.