How To Improve Your Reading Comprehension Skills
Many people always say read more, and you will become better at reading and understanding, and it will help your reading comprehension during the exams as well.
But what does being a good reader actually mean?
Being a good reader means that you need to be able to:
Understand what is going on in the text you are reading
Read between the lines
Understand what the writer is trying to say
In this lesson, we are going to be looking at a critical reading technique which you can use to help you understand whatever text you're reading better, and, basically, to help you improve your overall reading skills. This, in turn, can help you achieve a better grade in the Comprehension Paper 2 component of your secondary school English exams.
You can watch the video version of this blog post here. Read on if you prefer to go through the written explanation.
Click here to refer to the article from this lesson: Exploding the Myths of K-Pop
This is where we do not read the text yet. Instead, we look at everything else besides the text. What I mean by this is to look at the text features.
Examples of Text Features:
Heading or title
Synopsis or summary
Any other pieces of information that you can get about the text without actually reading the text
This step is basically preparing your mind to understand what the text is going to be about.
In the example below, we can already gather that we are going to be looking at some challenges that certain people face, specifically those who aspire to be Kpop stars. So they are not actually stars yet, but they want to become a Kpop star.
Now, let’s look at the title more closely:
So the title tells us that the article is about some misconceptions or misbeliefs specifically about Kpop.
I think there is an idea that being a K-pop star is something that is very glamorous that is all about fame and fortune, but maybe it's not. There could be more that goes on behind the scenes that all of us ordinary people don't know about.
In Step 2, we read the text. As you're reading, remember that it should just be mindless reading, but make sure that you are noting down any thoughts or comments that you have about the text. If it's a story, note done anything interesting that you found about it, or basically any thoughts that come to mind.
There are no right or wrong answers at this point of time. But this is just to help you really make sure that you understand what is going on in the text.
Practice: Read the paragraph below and note down any thoughts or comments you have.
Take a look at the notes that I have made below.
This is a very crucial skill that you will need to have in order to help you really fully understand the text. So in this step, ask yourself questions after every single paragraph. Some examples of questions you can ask are why, how or what:
Why did this character behave this way?
How did the cat get up onto the tree?
Again, there are no right or wrong questions here. It's just about you asking questions about the text, and you are just training yourself to think a little bit more critically about the text. This will help you with your overall understanding of the text.
Do take note that you may not get answers to all the questions that you ask. Sometimes you may find the answers in the text, but sometimes you may find that there are actually no answers. And once again, that's okay, because all you're doing right now is just to train yourself to think critically.
Practice: Write down one or two questions you think about when you read the paragraph
Take a look at the question that I asked when reading this paragraph
This is where we have to summarise the main idea of each paragraph.
Most of the time, we can get the main idea from the topic sentence or the closing sentence of each paragraph (refer to the picture below). These sentences usually contain the main idea of the paragraph. It's good to understand what each paragraph is trying to tell you so that you can understand what the writer is trying to say.
Practice: Summarise the main idea of this paragraph in one short sentence or phrase
Take a look at my summary of this paragraph
Click here to refer to the article from this lesson: Exploding the Myths of K-Pop
Keep applying this PRIS technique to every text that you read and you will find that it will help you improve your reading comprehension skills very quickly.
