How can I improve my reading comprehension skills? People who ask this question are often seeking shortcuts to mastering reading comprehension. Let’s explore the root of the difficulties that students face and, more importantly, the best solutions. English proficiency is all about context. Many students drill themselves on thousands of…
How can I improve my reading comprehension skills?
People who ask this question are often seeking shortcuts to
mastering reading comprehension. Let’s explore the root of the difficulties
that students face and, more importantly, the best solutions.
English proficiency is all about context.
Many students drill themselves on thousands of vocabulary words to improve their reading and writing skills. The problem? Rote memorization of definitions isn’t nearly as effective as learning the words via context—and you can do that only by reading.
Linguist J. R. Firth put it best: “A word is known by the company it keeps.” He asserts that the “complete meaning of a word is always contextual and no study of meaning apart from context can be taken seriously.” So how does this apply to you and your reading comprehension skills?
To not only learn new words, but also know how to use them, you have to study them in context. This means seeing how they are employed in sample sentences, or better yet, reading them “in the real world”: books, essays, and articles.
Definitions on their own are incomplete components of language. Therefore, a new word comes alive only when it’s surrounded by other words. Our brains have a much harder time absorbing definitions that are stripped of contextual vitality.
Ultimately, reading comprehension is not only about understanding the individual words you’re reading—it’s about understanding how those words work together, in sentences and paragraphs, to produce meaning. So instead of thinking about vocabulary and reading comprehension as two separate knowledge pools, think about them as being inextricably linked.
But aren’t there scoring strategies for reading comprehension tests?
When training students for reading comprehension tests, many tutors focus on short-term solutions, or “scoring strategies,” in hopes of raising their students’ scores quickly. In fact, some prominent tutoring services even try to show their students how to answer multiple-choice questions without even reading the passages first.
Unfortunately, these tricks and tips fail as often as they succeed. Here’s what’s even more important: scoring strategies won’t result in true improvement of your reading skills. That means you’ll be woefully unprepared for whatever comes after you finish answering the last question on that standardized test.
There are no shortcuts for building up your reading comprehension skills. Improvement requires practice and steady learning.
Can tutoring raise my SAT or ACT scores?
Taking lots of practice tests and getting tutored will certainly help improve your test scores to some degree, but there are limitations.
First of all, quick-fix tactics and test-taking tricks may lead to poor reading habits that are difficult to undo down the line.
Secondly, no matter how much you study for the test, your reading score’s upward trajectory will get stuck at a certain point if you lack a solid foundation of reading skills.
Reading nonfiction on a daily basis will help you move beyond this plateau.
Inference questions on the SAT and ACT, which are typically the most challenging, test the reader’s ability to catch the contextual flow of the passage. That’s a complex skill that requires slow and steady work, and a commitment to true learning.
Fortunately, by starting early and keeping up a steady pace, you don’t have to spend hours and hours every day. With ReadingCare, 15 minutes a day of nonfiction reading—accompanied by tutorial notes and quizzes—will add up over time. You’ll develop reading skills that will take you far beyond a couple of standardized tests in high school, through college and beyond.
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