Unit – 4
Reading Comprehension
Reading is the cognitive process of decoding symbols to derive meaning from them. It is the ability to understand text, decode its meaning and compare with what the reader already knows.
Knowledge of grammar and vocabulary are very essential to be a good reader. Attention span, the ability to understand the meaning of a word from context, the ability to co-relate thoughts and ideas, the ability to follow the flow of words, and the ability to identify various literary devices are the fundamental skills required for efficient reading.
We should make our pupil an efficient reader. An efficient reader is like a bus driver who knows when to go slow, when to accelerate speed, how to negotiate hair-pin bends on ghat roads etc. An efficient reader knows there are different levels of comprehension too as these are different reading materials. To become an efficient reader, one should be able to employ different study techniques Reading is an act of communication between writer and reader. It is an act in which the reader grasps the information the writer passes on to him.
Comprehension is the correct association of meanings with word symbols. It is the selection of the correct meaning suggested by the text It is a thinking process. It is thinking through reading. Students should lead and get complete meaning. There are two situations that arise while reading a passage. The pupils may find a reading comprehension passage difficult for them. The teacher should know about the difficulties beforehand and prevent their occurrence.
Some common difficulties are:
- Students are not able to concentrate on what they read.
- They are not able to recognize words. Noisy surroundings, inadequate lighting and uncomfortable seating arrangements.
- Unfamiliarity of the subject matter (eg) a child from a city may not understand a passage on farming and a village child about road signal systems.
- In effective questioning and answering techniques.
- Lack of appropriate guidance by the teacher Steps for the comprehension skills. These are various steps followed for the construction of comprehension.
Reading for the main idea:
Pupils should develop skills to identify the main idea or the central idea in what they read. This skill is necessary to get the main idea, identify the theme and get the implied meanings of the paragraph.
Activities to identify the main idea:
- Underlining key words.
- Selecting the topic sentence.
- Writing the title.
- Turning the sub heads or subtitles into a question (The answer to the question may give the main idea of the paragraph)
- Locating the function words that tie the sentence together. e.g then, therefore, but, etc.
Reading for detains:
Along with reading for and stating the main idea the pupils must learn to read for details.
Activities to accomplish reading for details ask the pupils to;
- Look at a picture and then describe what they see at the picture.
- Note the details in a paragraph after stating the main idea.
- Identify irrelevant sentences.
- Analyse the paragraph to make a formal outline.
- Carryout simple directions on how to do something.
- Respond to directions.
- Elicit answers concerning the details, develop chart, diagram or map of the sequence of events.
Reading for organization:
Good readers will understand the organisation of what is being read. They arrange the ideas in logical order. The key helps to recall the information is organization. Reading the content areas depends upon proficiency in organisation skills. A Good reader knows how paragraphs are organized.
Activities that help pupils learn in a logical order what they are reading:
- Organizing information about a given subject (eg) characteristics of animals)
- Grouping a series of details about a main idea.
- Developing an outline for a story with heading and subheadings.
- Arranging records, directions or ideas in sequential orders.
- Arranging various bits of information about a selected topic and grouping them into an information story.
Reading for summarising and outline:
Summaries help to pressure the essential facts and ideas in capsule form. They retain important information. So the pupils should develop summarizing skill. Outlining is another way of organisation. It is closely related to summarising activities to develop summarizing skills. Summarise a message to be sent as a telegram. Selecting the main idea from the choices you give them. Do exercise for writing an outline. Read a small poem and select the best summary from the choices you give them.
Example for Reading comprehension:
Read the following comprehensions and answer the questions:
In the 16th century, an age of great marine and terrestrial searching, Ferdinand Magellan led the first journey to sail around the world. As a young Portuguese noble, he worked for the king of Portugal, but he became involved in the quagmire of political conspiracy at court and lost the king’s good deed. After he was removed from service by the king of Portugal, he started to serve the future Emperor Charles V of Spain.
A papal decree of 1493 had allocated all land in the New World west of 50 degrees W longitude to Spain and all the land east of that line to Portugal. Magellan afforded to provide evidence that the East Indies fell under Spanish power. On September 20, 1519, Magellan set sail from Spain with five ships. More than a year later, one of these ships was searching the landscape of South America looking for a water route across the continent. This ship sank, but the outstanding four ships searched along the southern peninsula of South America. Lastly they found the passage they wanted near 50 degrees S latitude. Magellan called this passage the Strait of All Saints, but today it is recognized as the Strait of Magellan.
One ship abandoned while in this passage and came back to Spain, so fewer sailors were advantaged to look at that first panorama of the Pacific Ocean. Those who stayed back crossed the meridian now identified as the International Date Line in the early spring of 1521 after 98 days on the Pacific Ocean. During those long days at sea, many of Magellan’s men died of hunger and disease.
Later, Magellan became worried in an insular disagreement in the Philippines and was murdered in a tribal battle. Only one ship and 17 sailors under the authority of the Basque navigator Elcano survived to finish the westward voyage to Spain and thus show once and for all that the world is round, with no cliff at the border.
1. The 16th century was an age of large ______ exploration.
- Cosmic
- Land
- Mental
- Common man
- None of the above
2. Magellan lost the favor of the king of Portugal when he became involved in a political ________.
- Entanglement
- Discussion
- Negotiation
- Problem
- None of the above
3. The Pope separated New World lands between Spain and Portugal along with their location on one side or the other of an made-up physical line 50 degrees west of Greenwich that extends in a _________ direction.
- North and south
- Crosswise
- Easterly
- South east
- North and west
4. One of Magellan’s ships searched the _________ of South America for a passage across the continent.
- Coastline
- Mountain range
- Physical features
- Islands
- None of the above
5. Four of the ships sought after a passageway along a southern ______.
- Coast
- Inland
- Body of land with water on three sides
- Border
- Answer not available
6. The passage was found near 50 degrees of ________.
- Greenwich
- The equator
- Spain
- Portugal
- Madrid
7. In the spring of 1521, the ships crossed the _______ now called the International Date Line.
- Imaginary circle passing through the poles
- Imaginary line parallel to the equator
- Area
- Land mass
- Answer not available
Improving Comprehension skills
Improving Reading Comprehension Skills
Reading comprehension is a skill, and like other skills it can be improved over time. With reading comprehension, practice is the mantra, the more you read the better you'll be at understanding a text. Below are the seven main strategies which will help you hone your comprehension skills:
- Improve your vocabulary
- Come up with questions about the text you are reading
- Use context clues
- Look for the main idea
- Write a summary of what you read
- Break up the reading into smaller sections
- Pace yourself
1. Improve your vocabulary
The basic unit of a sentence is a word. Therefore, it is necessary to first understand the meaning of words in order to understand the meaning of sentences and ultimately the subtle meanings within the text. To improve your vocabulary, you can:
- Take an online vocabulary quiz to assess your current level of vocabulary understanding
- Use flashcards to quiz yourself on words you don’t know once or twice a week
- Make a point to use newly learned words in verbal and written communication
- Read as much as possible to improve your ability to guess what a word means in a certain context
- Make a list of unfamiliar words as you read and look them up in the dictionary
2. Come up with questions about the text you are reading
If you ask yourself questions while reading a text, it will help you get more invested and allow you to get a deeper understanding of the text. It will also allow you to explore themes, motifs and other components of text that you otherwise wouldn’t inquire about. The following are examples of questions you could pose as you read:
- Why was that location chosen to start the book by the author?
- What kind of relationships do characters share with each other?
- What do we know about the main character up to this point in the book?
- What are the themes consistently recurring throughout the book? What do they mean?
The more specific your questions, the more likely you will gain further insight into the text and its meaning.
3. Use context clues
Using context clues is a great way to understand what you are reading even if you don’t know all the vocabulary being used. Context clues can be found in the words and sentences surrounding the word that you aren’t familiar with. To use context clues, you can focus on the key phrases or ideas in a sentence and deduce the main idea of a sentence or paragraph based on this information. You can also look for nearby words that are synonyms or antonyms of the word you don’t know.
4. Look for the main idea
Identifying the main idea of a paragraph or article can help you determine the importance of the article. Understanding why the author has written what he has written will help you develop a deeper understanding of the text. While reading, pause after every paragraph and try to decipher the central idea behind the paragraph. Then, try to use your own words and describe the paragraph for further understanding.
5. Write a summary of what you read
Summarisation is a great way to increase your knowledge of what you have read. Summarizing requires you to decide what is important in the text and then put it in your own words. Summarizing allows you to determine if you truly understand what you have read and better remember what you have read in the long term.
6. Break up the reading into smaller sections
Breaking up a text into small sections is a great way of understanding the text more easily if the text is complicated. For example, you could read two paragraphs at a time and then pause to quickly summarize what you just read in your mind. Breaking up what you are reading can help you feel less overwhelmed and give you a better chance of truly comprehending the information in the text.
7. Pace yourself
Set realistic goals for yourself while reading by pacing yourself and allowing yourself some room to breathe. Literary texts require a deep understanding of the subject matter and pacing will be especially helpful for understanding literary texts. Set a goal for yourself that you know you can meet each day. For example, instead of trying to read a full hefty book in two days, try reading 4 chapters in one day. This allows you to reach your goals and also provides adequate time for you to process what you are reading between each session.
Tips to make the most of your reading comprehension practice
Reading is a fundamental part everyday life. These tips can help you make the most of your time when practicing your reading skills.
- Eliminate distractions: When you are distracted, your ability to comprehend what you are reading is negatively impacted. When reading—even if it’s a simple email—the focus should be solely on the text as concentration is an essential element of the cognitive process. This will help you learn to hold your attention on what you read and enable you to know whether you understand what you are reading.
b. Read a book below your reading level: Starting with books below your reading level will allow you to develop a baseline of your reading comprehension and build on that. Instead of starting with books that contain complicated subjects, read something that interests you, is comfortable and that you can easily comprehend. You can take online quizzes to determine your current reading level.
c. Re-read text to ensure understanding: If you finish a sentence or paragraph and realize that you don’t understand what it was trying to convey, take the time to re-read it until you do. Try to read more slowly the second time around and look up definitions for any words you don’t know the meaning of.
d. Read aloud: Reading aloud comprises of both visual and audio cognitive processes which helps you with your reading comprehension practice. It also forces you to slow down and gives you more time to process what you are reading.
Barriers to Reading
Some of the barriers to effective reading are as follows-
Lack of grammatical and linguistic competence:
Many people cannot read effectively because they fail to decrypt grammatical and lexical units of language in the text. They lack the ability to differentiate and recognize the words, sentences, expressions, used in the text. It hampers the process of reading. The reader may stop reading further if he fails to understand the text grammatically.
Lack of motivation:
Reading for information and knowledge requires motivation and discipline. Many people think reading as boring and time-consuming task. Lack of proper motivation and goal may create barrier to reading.
Lack of concentration:
Many a times a reader finds himself reading a passage or a page and later realizing that he had not understood the meaning of it at all. This happens due to a lack of concentration while reading. One of the main reasons for this is that the reader might be lost in his thoughts while he is reading. Reading is psycho-linguistic process and therefore requires careful attention of the reader.
Proper light and ventilation:
A reader has to struggle a lot to read in dim light or dark rooms. If proper ventilation is not there in the reading room, reader may feel suffocated or tired.
Subject of interest:
People often prefer reading texts that they are interested in. If one is reading a topic which is not according to his preferences, he may find himself losing interest gradually.
Articulating the words and sentences loudly:
Many readers have habit to articulate loudly or murmur the words in the text. They buzz each word which creates a barrier to speed reading.
Putting finger, pen or any object on the words and sentences while reading: Many people put their finger or pen on the text while reading. They move the finger or object from word to word which lowers down the process of reading.
Narrow eye span:
Readers often read the text one word at a time with independent eye shift between each and every word. They have narrow eye span. It not only decreases the speed of reading but also affects the comprehension. Shorter the eye span, slower the speed and comprehension. Readers require proper training and techniques to expand their eye span.
Types of Reading: Skimming, Scamming and Fast Reading
Skimming and Scanning are reading techniques that use rapid eye movement to shuffle quickly through the text for relevant information. Although they both use the same technique they are quite different methods of reading.
Skimming
Skimming is the process of rapidly reading a text in order to get a general overview of the content. Skimming helps comprehend the general information within a text or a particular section of the text.
Before skimming, one should prepare oneself to read rapidly through the pages. One should not read every word; but special attention must be paid to typographical cues-headings, boldface and italic type, indenting, bulleted and numbered lists.
One should be alert for the names of people and places, key words and phrases, dates, nouns, and unfamiliar words.
Skimming involves the following steps:
1. First the table of content or the chapter overview must be read to get the structural overview of the text.
2. Main headings of each chapter must be glanced through. All headings of charts and tables must be read.
3. After glancing through headings, the whole introductory paragraph must be read followed by the first and last lines of each succeeding paragraph. For each paragraph, only the first few words of each sentence must be read to locate the central idea.
4. Words indicated with boldface or italics must always be read.
5.When something significant is found, the whole sentence containing it should be given priority. One should not waste time reading extraneous details while skimming.
6.All chapter summaries must be read at the end if provided.
Skimming may help understand the text at the most basic level but to get the complete idea of a topic it should always be read completely. Skimming is useful for reading news articles, finding source material for research papers, previewing and reviewing or getting a general idea from a long selection of texts.
Although skimming can save hours of work, it is not advisable to skim often. This is because while skimming one may miss important points or finer shades of meaning.
Scanning
Scanning, like skimming, also uses keywords and organizational cues, but while the objective of skimming is a big picture view of the text, the objective of scanning is to locate and collect particular facts.
It is necessary to skim the text first to decide if it is likely to contain the facts you need. While skimming one should concentrate on table of contents, summaries, indexes, headings, and typographical cues. If after skimming it is established that the text has relevant information, it can be scanned.
Following are some rules to be kept in mind while scanning:
1. It is essential to know what one is looking for. If there is a keyword or a phrase attached to the topic, one should start with that word or phrase and begin the scanning process.
1. Only one keyword should be used during one scan. If there is a need for multiple keywords than multiple scans should be conducted.
2. The eyes should rapidly float around the page until the required keyword or phrase is found.
3. After finding the desired keyword, the text surrounding that keyword should be read carefully.
The process of scanning could be tiring as it requires a lot of concentration. One should not let their attention wander while scanning as they might lose track of the keyword or phrase. Scanning is very useful during research projects to find particular facts or fact-heavy topics.
Fast Reading or Rapid Reading
Rapid reading or Fast reading usually involves techniques for moving the eyes faster in order to gather information more quickly. This might include Skimming and Scanning.
How to do Rapid Reading
To begin rapid reading, it is often recommended to start with a book that you find relatively easy to understand with a consecutive story. Have a timer to hand, and read a few pages at your normal speed, and just notice how long you spend on a page.
Then set your timer for half that time, read as quickly as you can down the page and move to the next page each time your timer goes off, and just see how much information you get. The first couple of pages might seems a bit overwhelming, but once the panic subsides, you’ll be amazed at how much you can pick up if you go quickly. And once you’ve doubled your speed, you can double again … and again. You only need to read enough to know what it’s about and to get as much information as you need.
Below are some things that must be done before starting fast reading:
1. Get into a good state – sit up straight, take a deep breath, relax, and smile.
2. Open your peripheral vision by keeping your gaze on the opposite wall while relaxing your eyes and trying to see both ears at the same time. Notice how much more you can see to right and left without moving your eyes.
3. Hold the book at a 45 degree angle in front of you – and a little bit further away than normal.
4. Begin to fast read to speed up your eyes and your brain before you start. That means glancing quickly down each page in 10 seconds or less for several pages. You shouldn’t be understanding what you’re looking at – the aim isn’t to read at that speed (yet), simply to get your eyes and brain working quicker, so when you read more slowly, you seem to have more time – which allows you to read more quickly than you do ‘normally’.
Strategies for Reading
Below are some fundamental reading strategies:
1. Previewing:
Previewing refers to take a quick glance at a text before actually reading it. It enables readers to understand the organizational structure of a text. Previewing includes the process of skimming through the text and looking at the headings, table of contents (if any) and typographical cues to get the general idea of what the text is about.
2. Contextualizing:
Contextualizing refers to the process of placing the text in its appropriate historical, biographical and cultural background. When one reads a text they often tend to look at it through the lenses of one's won background, leading to a misjudged or biased reading of the text. Contextualizing helps one eradicate this problem by understanding the scenario and purpose for which the text was written.
3. Questioning:
Asking questions while reading a text helps one remember and understand what they have read up to that moment. Questions should be asked after the end of each paragraph and they should deal with the general gist of that paragraph and not with little details contained inside it.
4. Reflecting:
While reading, one's personal beliefs or opinions may be challenged by the text. Here it is important to reflect on one's unconscionably held belief's and values and how the text affects them. As one is reading the text for the first time, an X should be marked in the margin at each point where they feel a personal challenge to their attitudes, beliefs, or status. A brief note should be made in the margin about what one feels or about what in the text created the challenge. After marking, the text should be read again to find out any patterns one has regarding personal beliefs.
5. Outlining and summarizing:
Summarizing a text is a great way to ascertain if one has grasped the intended meaning of the text. While outlining deals with the general overview of the text, summarizing is the process of writing down what one has understood about the central idea of the text in their own words thereby forming a new text in itself.
Although summarizing begins with outlining, it always ends with creating its own independent text. Outlining focuses on a close analysis of each paragraph, however, summarizing requires creative synthesis. Outlining and summarizing shows how reading critically can lead to deeper understanding of any text.
6. Evaluating an argument:
Evaluating involves the process of testing the logic of a text, its credibility and emotional impact. Writers make assumptions which they want the readers to accept as true, although a critical reader must always evaluate and question what he reads. One should not accept the details within a text as they are presented before him, he should always be prepared to question and assess the text at every step. This will help the reader to grasp any hidden meanings within the text.
7. Comparing and contrasting related readings:
Comparing the text one reads with other texts helps the reader to get a better understanding of the text. Sometimes authors refer to similar incidents but with different perspectives. Comparing various texts helps the reader shine new light on a particular subject letting him explore it more deeply. This might also lead to a change in the readers opinions regarding the topic.
