Reading comprehension is the ability to read text, process it and understand its meaning. An individual’s ability to comprehend text is influenced by their traits and skills, one of which is the ability to make inferences. If word recognition is difficult, students use too much of their processing capacity to read individual words, which interferes with their ability to comprehend what is read. There are a number of approaches to improve reading comprehension, including improving one’s vocabulary and reading strategies.

1. Monitoring comprehension

Comprehension monitoring instruction teaches students to:

• Be aware of what they do understand
• Identify what they do not understand
• Use appropriate strategies to resolve problems in comprehension
• Help students focus on text structure “differences between fiction and nonfiction” as they read
• Provide students with tools they can use to examine and show relationships in a text
• Help students write well-organized summaries of a text
  • Questions can be effective because they:
  • Give students a purpose for reading
  • Focus students’ attention on what they are to learn
  • Help students to think actively as they read
  • Encourage students to monitor their comprehension
  • Help students to review content and relate what they have learned to what they already know

2. Metacognition

Metacognition can be defined as “thinking about thinking.” Good readers use metacognitive strategies to think about and have control over their reading. Before reading, they might clarify their purpose for reading and preview the text. During reading, they might monitor their understanding, adjusting their reading speed to fit the difficulty of the text and “fixing” any comprehension problems they have. After reading, they check their understanding of what they read.

            3. Graphic and semantic organizers

Graphic organizers illustrate concepts and relationships between concepts in a text or using diagrams. Graphic organizers are known by different names, such as maps, webs, graphs, charts, frames, or clusters.

Graphic organizers can:

4.   Answering questions

Summarizing requires students to determine what is important in what they are reading and to put it into their own words. Instruction in summarizing helps students:

• Identify or generate main ideas
• Connect the main or central ideas
• Eliminate unnecessary information
• Remember what they read

Reference:

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/seven-strategies-teach-students-text-comprehension

By: VIOLETA S. SOBREVIÑAS | MT-I | LUAKAN NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL