Reading comprehension is one of the essential skills that everyone needs to master. From newspapers to the internet, we need better comprehension skills to understand what we read. Teachers should develop comprehension skills to guide students to read and understand better. Nowadays, comprehension has become an essential part of teaching aptitude tests. This blog will look at some strategies for teachers to improve their comprehension skills.
What is comprehension skill, and why is it important?
Comprehension skills, also known as reading comprehension, refer to one’s ability to read a passage and understand its meaning. Since reading is one of the essential skills to learn, teachers should improve their reading comprehension skills. Developing comprehension skills motivates us to read joyfully and improve our professional life.
Reading comprehension involves two major components. They are text comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. If you have better vocabulary knowledge and understand the meaning of words better, you can effectively improve your comprehension skills. Text comprehension helps us understand the deeper meaning of a text, and it is an essential skill to enhance comprehension skills. Let us look at the six crucial tips to improve your reading comprehension.
1. Enhance your vocabulary skills
To understand the exact meaning of a passage and learn new words, you need to enhance your vocabulary skills. There are several ways to improve your vocabulary. Initially, you have to assess your current level of vocabulary understanding. You can attempt online quizzes or tests to check your current stage. Based on that, you can start learning new words. Note down the new words learned and use them regularly. Mark the unfamiliar words while reading a book or magazine and try finding their meanings.
2. Learn to summarize
Summarizing a passage helps to understand its theme and determine its importance. Try to read the entire text and analyze its key points. Now, try to translate the text in your words by reading the key issues. This method helps you determine how well you have understood the passage and improves your reading comprehension skill as well. Summarizing also helps to extract the necessary points to remember and eliminates unnecessary lines given in the passage.
3. Read plenty of books
Improving reading comprehension skills needs more reading practice. If you have a bookstore or library nearby, you make sure you are consistently using it. Try reading books that are slightly beyond your reading level. By doing so, you will get to know new words every day and improve your vocabulary skills. While reading large paragraphs, try to break them down into smaller passages for better understanding and thereby improve your overall comprehension and reading skills.
4. Make use of online sources
There are so many websites available that offer free books to download and read. Apart from websites, many reading apps are available on Playstore, on which you can keep track of your daily reading progress. Apps such as Audible provide audiobooks to which you can listen to various books on the go. Audiobooks improve listening and reading skills, and you can learn more words by listening to them.
5. Think deeper
If you are reading a passage, try to understand it by using your critical thinking skills. If you spot a word that is new to you, try to think deeper to understand its meaning. You can use context clues when a word is completely unique to you. You can look for the entire meaning of a line and guess what would be the appropriate meaning of the new word. This improves your thinking skills and makes you remember words you learned before. Reading by understanding the deeper meaning helps you remember the background knowledge of every concept you learn.
6. Ask questions to yourself while reading
While reading a text, ask yourself questions frequently to understand more about the text. Asking questions to yourself helps to inquire more about it and gives you a better reading strategy. Try to think of questions like what is the message that this passage conveys? Why did the author write such an introduction? If your questions are more specific, you will gain more insights about the passage, which helps to improve your overall reading comprehension skill.
To Wrap Up
Teachers should have better comprehension skills to transform their teaching to the next higher level and inspire students to learn more. Since teaching involves reading a lot, they should have excellent comprehension skills to teach their students well. Adopt the above-discussed comprehension strategies to improve comprehension skills effectively.
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