Reading comprehension

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Reading comprehension can be defined as the level of understanding of a passage or text. For normal reading rates (around 200-220 words per minute) an acceptable level of comprehension is above 75%.

Reading comprehension can be improved by: Training the ability to self assess comprehension, actively test comprehension using questionnaires, and by improving metacognition. Teaching conceptual and linguistic knowledge is also advantageous.

Self assessment can be conducted by summarizing, and elaborative interrogation, and those skills will gradually become more automatic through practice.

For children in K-12 public schools in the United States, building reading comprehension skills to pass the high-stake tests mandated by the No Child Left Behind Laws is a top priority. Many parents when informed that their children need to build comprehension skills do not know where to start. Effective reading comprehension is the culmination of mastering vocabulary, phonics, fluency, and reading comprehension skills. The reading skills pyramid illustrates how these skills are expected to be built in most public schools.

Reading comprehension skills separates the "passive" unskilled reader from the "active" readers. Skilled readers don't just read, they interact with the text. To help a beginning reader understand this concept, you might make them privy to the dialogue readers have with themselves while reading.

Skilled readers, for instance:

Predict what will happen next in a story using clues presented in text
Create questions about the main idea, message, or plot of the text
Monitor understanding of the sequence, context, or characters
Clarify parts of the text which have confused them
Connect the events in the text to prior knowledge or experience

[edit] Reading Comprehension Testing

Comprehension testing is very useful in improving reading comprehension, not only because it gives the teacher a measure of progress, but it supplements the reader's perception of his or her own ability. Learning readers commonly fail to accurately assess their own comprehension. A comprehension test can accelerate their ability to self assess their own comprehension levels as they progress. However, a poorly constructed reading comprehension test can deceive the learner and disturb progress. Indeed, it has been found that poorly constructed tests often train the reader to mis-assess their own reading performance.

Reading comprehension is best tested using carefully constructed questions which quiz natural, or non-concocted passages of text. The questions themselves can be requests to summarize, open ended questions, Cloze formats, and carefully constructed multiple choice questions.

The multiple choice format must use questions that quiz the overall meanings of the text, the details and the most important meaning of the words. The background of the reader must be taken into account. For example, if an answer is general knowledge, then it will not measure the comprehension of the passage, but the memory of that knowledge. Likewise, the questions should not give clues to the answers of other questions. In this way it makes the multiple choice format hard to devise. Speed reading courses and books generally design their comprehension tests using the antithesis of these factors in order to mislead the reader into believing that their reading comprehension has improved with increased speed.