Comprehending textbooks and reading various kinds of passages for comprehension is an integral part of one’s life. Some way or the other, you do have to go through textbooks that you need to comprehend. It’s a lengthy, entertaining, and tricky part of the English syllabus in most educational institutions. Let us know What are the ‘Reading Comprehensions’.
Reading Comprehensions
Reading comprehensions can be a boring and tiring process for some people but, when you have certain kinds of skills to analyze the whole passage without really wasting too much time, it isn’t too difficult. However, reading long comprehensions can be complex and they can be tackled by using smarter ways to do things. Developing skills like decoding, building fluency, vocabulary, sentence construction, and giving reasoning and background knowledge can highly help.
1. Decoding
Decoding is the first and foremost important part of learning how to read comprehension effectively. It is a skill that most people tend to learn in their youth, which is trying to pronounce words that they’ve heard but never seen in text form. If you’re able to do that, that means your foundation of learning other skills has been made and now you’ll find them much easier to put into action.
Decoding itself relies on a much broader language skill known as phonemic awareness. It allows kids to hear a particular type of sound of words that are known as phenoms. So, being able to read properly and taking out the correct sound for pronunciation of words in the passage you’re trying to comprehend is very important.
How can you learn to decode?
As a kid, this comes naturally to you when you’re exposed to surroundings that are influenced by people who read lots of books, and if you are yourself into reading books, rhymes, and even listening to useful songs, which helps you build a strong memory of words that will rest with you for a lifetime.
If you’re trying to help your kids learn this language skill, you can read them some basic books which will help them understand some words and you can engage them in activities for learning like the games in which you need to be able to make words.
2. Building Fluency
Fluency makes you more confident in reading and builds up your speed, that’s why it’s important to also work on your fluency if you’re trying to learn all the skills to make reading comprehension a lot easier and a fast process for you. Developing fluency is not as hard as some may think, it is just some practice away!
To have fluency in your reading, you need to be able to immediately recognize words without sounding them out yet. It should be by sight that you know what word is written. Fluency is when you can read faster and without making too many mistakes.
Fluent readers can read passages smoothly and at a comfortable pace. It is easily understandable by the people hearing it and easy for the reader to comprehend the passage quickly because he can recognize words and they make sense to him. That is how decoding plays its role here.
For fluency to stay with you throughout, you need to have some “sight words” meaning you remember words (what they mean, their spelling, and structure) by just looking at them. On average, you can easily have sight words when you look at words about fifteen times to only one time. Depends on your memory and the complexity of the word.
How can you build fluency in your reading?
Get yourself books with your level of difficulty and practice reading. It will help you have your sight words which automatically helps in fluency. However, reading out loud has a lot of benefits for this.
3. Vocabulary
Having a strong vocabulary is the key feature of comprehension at its best. The more you know the meaning of words, your comprehension skills will increase as much. For a richer vocabulary, there are a ton of things you can do. You can learn a better vocabulary through your surroundings if you’re exposed to people with a rich vocabulary and reading books aloud.
If you want your kid to develop a richer vocabulary, you can read aloud to them and also ask them to read alone but whenever they’re a new word, allow them to explain what they feel this could mean according to the sentence and then correct them if needed and explain the word properly with examples so that it stays in their mind for longer.
You can also help your kids or yourself by engaging in talking about different types of topics. It helps you gain and give off more knowledge than you know! It’s very important and highly recommended for anyone who wants to have a richer vocabulary.
How can you learn this skill?
As well as you can ask the teachers of your kids to give them a word each day to make sentences on and use during the day. It will help them develop a sense of understanding the word better (since everyone in their class will do the same) and their learning will be much more effective.
One can get books for vocabulary only and try to construct sentences throughout the day on those words. It will help in gaining knowledge about using the correct words in the appropriate situations. Do not shy away from speaking in front of other people, remember everyone, at some point learned things they’re proud of now and you’re just at that learning stage.
4. Sentence formation:
If you continue speaking and taking part in social activities like public speaking, you’ll meet people who are practicing reading and have better skills too so that will help you be in a healthy environment for the person you want to become.
Understanding how sentences are formed can seem like a skill related to writing. It can also connect ideas within and between sentences, which is called cohesion. But these skills are also important for reading comprehensions.
Knowing how ideas connect at the sentence level helps children get meaning from passages and entire texts. It also leads to something called cohesion, or the ability to connect ideas to other ideas in the overall text. It’s important to realize the importance of the way a passage is written for the reader.
How can you learn this skill?
Explicit instruction can teach children the basics of sentence construction. For example, teachers can work with students to connect two or more ideas, both through writing and reading. So, likewise, practice works here as well.
Background knowledge about the comprehensions:
Knowledge about the world is also very important in comprehension skills. When kids don’t know what goes on in their life, they will have trouble understanding the passages better, so watching TV shows, movies, or reading books can help them develop the skill.
They should be able to take out the meaning of a word used in lines of the passage even if it’s not clearcut written with its meaning. They should know what it can mean according to the situation and what factors could affect those situations. It’s just a brain game and as much as you know what goes on in the world, the easier it will be for them to comprehend.
Having background knowledge about the book they’re reading will help them read faster and build better fluency. So, whenever you hand them a book, make them read some reviews about it or the back of the cover. Which mostly has the main theme of the whole book.
How can you help them build this skill?
You need to be exposed to and expose your children to most things and types of behaviors. One should talk about your experiences to them and let them have an idea about what can happen around them and what has been happening.
Of course, you should keep all your conversations safe for them to only learn from and not develop traumas, but they should know about most of the types of behaviors, and it will not only help them in reading but also living a better life with much more knowledge about people and their lives.
Conclusion:
Comprehending can be complex briefly but when you dig into the skills that will help you do it better, you will get to know that it can get much simpler and faster if you keep a few things in mind. Those are to have a better vocabulary and understanding of what you’re reading. It will make the passage more interesting and help you understand it better. You should develop fluency in your reading and that can be done by practicing a lot and reading out loud.
Other than that, sight words play a vital part in reading comprehensions. When you look at a word 13-14 times, you have it pasted in your memory and you can recognize the word immediately when you look at it. That eventually helps in reading better and understanding what you’re reading while going at a comfortable pace with fluency. You also need to develop the skill of understanding what a word means just by reading the sentence, it will not only make your understanding better but also your fluency with a proper style of reading.
