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How to...Improve Your Child's Comprehension Skills
Reading comprehension requires motivation, a mental framework for holding ideas, concentration and good study techniques. So, in order to foster the skills of effective reading comprehension in your child, you could try the following:
- Develop your child's general knowledge: Make efforts to broaden her background knowledge on different events and happenings. Get her to read newspapers, magazines, books and articles on world events. Subscribe to First News, an awarding-winning weekly newspaper for age 7-14 years.
- Develop a library habit: Make it a routine habit to take your child to a library on the weekends. Exposure to new reading material will increase his interest in and love of books and hone his reading comprehension skills.
- Teach your child to anticipate and predict: Smart readers try to anticipate the author and predict future ideas and issues. Hence you should help your child to predict the events and the characters’ actions in the book or passage she is reading. If she gets it right, her understanding is reinforced and, if she is wrong, she still benefits because she will become a better reader as her adjustments become quicker.
- Teach your child the structure of paragraphs: Help your child learn the effective construction of paragraphs. Paragraphs are usually complete with a proper beginning, middle and an end. You should also teach him the use of transitional words and phrases that change a point of view within a paragraph. Emphasise the proper reading of the whole text with a little more stress on the first and last sentences in each paragraph.
- Teach your child to pay attention to supporting cues: Ask your child to study pictures, graphs and headings in order to help her comprehend the text. This is important in comprehending non-fiction text.
- Highlight, summarise and review: In order to facilitate a better and deeper understanding of the written content, get your child to highlight, summarise, and review the important ideas. Simply reading through is not enough. He must know how to effectively review what he is reading.
- Encourage your child to make connections: Making personal connections with the book she is reading will deepen your child's understanding and enjoyment of the content. There are three types of connections which can be made: a connection of the text to her own circumstances, a connection of the text to another text and connect the text to a world event.
- Encourage your child to visualise: Ask your child to picture the story or content in his head, just like a movie. When possible, ask him to compare and contrast his visualization with a movie version of the book which he has seen. Ask him questions about what he pictures, to ensure that he has understood the content.
- Demonstrate fix-up strategies: You can improve your child’s reading comprehension skills through drilling her in fixing-up strategies such as stopping (at the things which seem difficult to understand) and going back over them. Get her to stop at the end of the paragraph, rather than as soon as she comes across the difficulty, before going back over the paragraph. This is because the context of the rest of the paragraph may clear up her misunderstanding. With fix-up strategies at her fingertips, your child can settle down to an enjoyable read.
- Surround your child with quality books: Help your child become comfortable with the ‘world of words’ so that his vocabulary is richer and comprehension skills naturally improve. Provide him with access to quality reading and set aside a regular time for reading.
Reading is much more than just sounding out words. Reading is a most enriching and informative practice which connects the ideas on the page with the knowledge already in the possession of the reader. Reading plays an influencing role in ensuring academic and professional excellence.
Comprehension forms a very crucial part of the reading process and its importance should be realised and given due weight. Reading comprehension is the ability to understand a written passage of text which allows the reader to interact with the text in a meaningful way. Reading comprehension acts as a bridge from passive to active reading, from letters and words to characters and context.
Updated: 22/03/11
English
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