Skills for Reading Comprehension

Gathering from the parents and teachers whom I spoke to, it seems that the task of reading comprehension is a challenge for many students. And most are puzzled, and I believe, also frustrated at why the children just seems unable to perform well in this section despite countless practices and gentle (sometimes not-so-gentle) reminders to read the passage carefully, slowly and maybe a few more times.

Well, the first misconception to clear up is that being able to Read does not equate to Comprehension. They are in fact two very separate tasks that require different abilities, yet at times are as one.

For the purpose of helping our child be better in Reading Comprehension (as a task), let’s take a look at the underlying abilities necessary to accomplish this task.
(And, NO. It is more than and beyond just the subject of English)

Using the following ‘simple’ passage as an example:

Q1. Why were we scared when we arrived at the farm?
Q2. What can we feed a baby cow with?

Based on the above passage, here are the underlying abilities a child needs (besides just being able to recognise words and read sentences):

Visual Discrimination
- To differentiate between words that are similarly spelled (such as dairy / diary, scared / sacred, or some may misread ‘quite’ as ‘quiet’)
Meaning of Words (commonly known as Vocabulary)
- To be able to answer the questions that follow, a child would have to understand that ‘calf’ refers to a baby cow and that ‘herd’ refers to a big number of cows
- The word ‘milk’ appeared twice but actually have different contextual meanings (one is referring to an action while the other is a noun)
Visual Tracking and Focus
- To follow the sentence from left to right, beginning to end, without skipping lines or words
Verbal Sequence (how the words are put together to form an overall idea)
- The child perceive meaning only when he/she is able to organise the information into meaningful sequence of sentences, instead of just singular words on their own

Is your child facing difficulty with Reading Comprehension? It could in fact be due to him/her having weakness in one or more of the underlying abilities needed to do this task – and may not necessary just be about ‘not trying hard enough’ or ‘just did not read it carefully’.

To understand your child’s underlying abilities, REGISTER for our Complimentary Learning Assessment

Article contributed by ThinkersBox

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Submitted by Advertorial on Mon, 07/11/2011 - 9:15am

After she has read the book,

After she has read the book, test her comprehension by asking her questions. Of course, you have to make it fun e.g. play a game with her based on the book like: what is the colour of the hood that Riding Hood wears? If you are going to granny's house, what will you bring? etc etc. You can also change the story like: how about making up a story that you go to grandpa's house? These questions will set her thinking and from there you can gauge how much she understands the story. I usually let children read what they like e.g. one of my students loves football and I let him read articles in the sports section of The Straits Times while encouraging him to read the rest of the papers also. If they enjoy what they're doing, children will be more willing to work hard at it.

tutormum | Sat, 10/12/2011 - 11:51pm

Different types of information for different levels

It is interesting to know that children (and adults) can receive and understand information mainly in 3 forms or formats, and each of these formats are suitable for different developmental stages.

The 3 formats are:

(i) Figural (pictures, images,etc) - children begin out by being able to identify objects through their pictorial representation. They may not be able to read or recognise the words, but usually should have no difficulty recognising the pictorial object. That's why flash cards are used at the pre-kinder ages to help children learn.

(ii) Symbolic (numbers, words, etc) - as children develop (about K2 to P1), they start to learn their alphabets and numbers, and realise that when letters are put together, they will form a word or when numbers are put together, they can represent a value.

(iii) Semantic (overall ideas and concepts) - at the higher level, children need to be able to understand and grasp big picture ideas (such as reading a text and getting the overall story flow)

In a typical development, children aged 4-6 years old are predominantly in their figural stage of learning (means they absorb and understand info mostly in pictorial forms). So, if your 4 year-old does not seem so keen on books filled with words, it is probably that they are still moving through the figural development stage.

ThinkersBox | Sat, 03/12/2011 - 5:42pm

My gal is 4 now, although she

My gal is 4 now, although she needs books every night and "reads" everyday, i am wondering how much she is actually READING the story (words) and understanding the story. However, whenever i insist she reads the words to me, i find that she can read it and some books like READ-IT-Yourself has comprehension questions behind, she is able to comprehen.

But i am worried coz whenever she sees a book with too many words and very little pictures, she tend to put it aside.. How can i help? I guess its no longer just surround them with books, keep flipping through books will help anymore, does it?

What can i do to help her?

quixation | Mon, 28/11/2011 - 2:24pm