Reading Comprehension Strategies

Reading Comprehension Strategies English for Professionals 1 Dias Agata, S.S., M.Pd.

Reading Is A Complex Activity A skilled reader rapidly and accurately decodes the words, attaches the meaning to words and sentences, connects text information to relevant background knowledge, maintains a mentalrepresentation of what he or she has already read, forms hypotheses about upcoming information and makes decisions based on his or her purpose for reading – all at the same time. Carlisle and Rice, 2002

What Do Good Readers Do? • Make predictions based on background knowledge • Identify key ideas from text they are reading • Are aware of text structures • Monitor their comprehension • Have a knowledge of and use a variety of reading strategies effectively. • Paraphrase, explain and summarize information and construct conclusions

Retelling (Visualization) • Read a passage related to the topic • As you read, draw simple pictures that mark the actions, events, or key points. • After reading, retell the passage as you point to the pictures in sequence. Incorporate important vocabulary into the retelling. • Students retell the passage after you have modeled.

“A New Way Of Travel” We see cars everywhere we go. Can you imagine a world without any cars. Cars have been around for only about a hundred years. Before cars were invented, people traveled by horse or by a carriage or wagon pulled by horse. Travel was very slow. At one time cars were a rare sight on the city streets. Cars were expensive. Most people could not afford them. It took a long time to make a car. There were so many parts to put together. It took a few people many, many hours to put a car together, so there were not many cars available. A man named Henry Ford came up with an idea to make cars low cost and faster to make. His idea was known as an assembly line. To assemble a car, many workers stood in a line. Each worker was responsible for putting on only one part of a car. As a car moved down the line of workers, each worker put on their one part. With more workers and each worker responsible for putting on only one part repeatedly, more cars were made in a shorter period of time. All of the cars were similar, with the same parts and colors, and less expensive.

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Now You Try… With a partner, read the next story and draw a picture to represent each story part. Use just the pictures to retell the story.

“The Contest” Once upon a time, the wind and the sun were having an argument about who was the stronger of the two. “We must have a contest. That is the only way we will ever know who is the stronger one,” said the sun. “I am ready for any contest. What should it be?" said the wind. “Look at all those people in the city. Whichever of us can make all the people in the city take off their coats is the winner,” said the sun. “OK,” said the wind, “It is hardly a challenge, but I will do it. Who should go first?” “Because I am so sure that I will win, I will let you go first,” said the sun. The sun hid behind a large fluffy cloud and the wind got to work. His idea was to blow an icy blast that would blow the coats right off the people in the city. The wind blew and blew and blew. The blast was the coldest, strongest blast that the people had ever felt. Instead of blowing the coats right off the people, a strange thing happened. The people wrapped their coats tightly around themselves. The harder the wind blew, the tighter the people wrapped their coats around themselves. At last, the exhausted wind gave up. Now, it was time for the sun to get to work. The sun came out from behind the clouds and shone down on the city with all his strength. The people began to feel the warmth of the sun. They loosened their coats. The sun continued to shine with all his might. The people grew warmer and warmer. Soon they were so warm that they had to take their coats off. So the sun won the contest. He was indeed the stronger of the two!

Multiple Strategiesfor Reading Comprehension Summarizing – identifying and paraphrasing main ideas. Questioning – formulating and answering questions about the content. Clarifying – recognizing and correcting “breakdowns” in comprehension Predicting – forming hypotheses about upcoming events or information.

Let’s Practice! Read the following passageand try to use the 4 strategies

Having no language, infants cannot be told what they need to learn. Yet by the age of three they will have mastered the basic structure of their native language and will be well on their way to communicative competence. Acquiring their language is a most impressive intellectual feat. Students of how children learn language generally agree that the most remarkable aspect of this feat is the rapid acquisition of grammar. Nevertheless, the ability of children to conform to grammatical rules is only slightly more wonderful than their ability to learn words. It has been reckoned that the average high school graduate in the United States has a reading vocabulary of 80. 000 words, which includes idiomatic expressions and proper names of people and places. This vocabulary must have been learned over a period of 16 years. From the figures, it can be calculated that the average child learns at a rate of about 13 new words per day. Clearly a learning process of great complexity goes on at a rapid rate in children.

1. What is the main subject of the passage. (A) Language acquisition in children (B) Teaching languages to children (C) How to memorize words (D) Communicating with infants 2. The word "feat" in line 5 is closest in meaning to which of the following? (A) Experiment (B) Idea (C) Activity (D) Accomplishment 3. The word "reckoned' in line 7 is closest in meaning to which of the following? (A) Suspected (B) Estimated (C) Proved (D) Said 4. In line 8, the word "which" refers to (A) their ability (B) reading vocabulary (C) idiomatic expression (D) learning process 5. According to the passage, what is impressive about the way children learn vocabulary. (A) They learn words before they learn grammar (B) They learn even very long words. (C) They learn words very quickly. (D) They learn the most words in high school.

Reading Comprehension Strategies