Reading comprehension. Three strategies to improve your understanding.

Reading comprehension is an aspect of great relevance for any type of reader, whether they are amateur readers or readers for academic purposes. Through reading comprehension, we can have a broader and clearer understanding of what we are being taught or shown. A fact about this skill is that it is not presented in the same way for all readers, since for several reasons some people may find it easier to read and understand something than others. However, it does not mean that only a few people can make use of this ability. There are a series of plans or strategies that we can use to improve our reading comprehension and thus, be more efficient when it comes to reading and understanding.

Making connections.

Making connections is a recurring strategy in reading comprehension since this strategy helps readers to have a better notion from an association that can be provided. When readers make connections in the texts, they will have a better understanding of its content. It also helps to retain the information better and be more focused on the information in the text.

How to make these connections?

The best way to make connections is through questions. Depending on the text you are reading, you can make associations with the text itself, real-life cases, other readings, or any situation that can help you relate.

Example: Those kids playing remind me of when I was young and I used to do the same with my friends.

Retelling.

This strategy is about connecting different ideas of what we are reading and therefore, being able to have a whole background of the whole context. Retelling helps readers to identify main ideas and important details, in addition to that, it helps us to avoid over information and be focused on those key points.

How can we make a retelling?

We can make an outline by dividing what we read into several sections such as the beginning, the middle and the end. Finally, the general idea after connecting all the parts of the text.

Example:

Start: The text begins by talking about the importance of recycling and why we must adopt it in our lifestyle from today.

Middle: The recycling methods suggested in the text are: recycle by category, separate and avoid buying food packed with plastic.

End: Recycling helps to reuse the garbage and avoid contamination or overproduction.

General idea: There are different methods of recycling that we can adopt in our lifestyle and help our planet.

Notes and Highlights.

Although it seems like a strategy that may seem very obvious, many people forget how effective they could be. Notes can be a fairly important strategy when reading because although it seems to be something similar to retelling, they are usually implemented to preserve specific details of great importance. it will help us to remember an entire section and also, to join sequences of what we are reading. On the other hand, there are also many people who like to use highlighters. The highlighters help us to stand out those specific phrases or sentences that we want to review when we need it.

How can we make notes?

Many people find the old method of paper and pencil in hand useful to occasionally write important details. In the case of highlighters, many people like to color directly from the book so they don't have to use extra supplies like a notebook. In the case of having a notebook, you can take notes and highlight some aspects more important than others.

Example: Notes: ''In Chapter 1 Alex behaved like an immature person who did not accept the difficult moments in life''.

Highlights: ''He did not accept that it is not due to a wish of his parents not to send him on vacation to Europe, but they are not in the economic capacity to do so''.

All people are in the capacity to understand a text regardless of the degree of complexity that some may represent, the most important thing is to always have concentration and keep in mind the different strategies that we can apply in our readings. As reading becomes habitual for us, we can improve and be more efficient in this task of understanding whatever we are reading.