You might have heard reading is good for you. You might have heard this your whole life. Reading is pretty easy and entertaining. But there are some people who don’t know how to read. There are some people who enjoy reading but they have trouble in comprehending it. A lot of people mistake reading comprehension with retention. Comprehension refers to understanding what you read while as Retention refers remembering what you read. However, reading comprehension and retention go hand-in-hand. If you don’t understand what you’re reading, it’s much harder to remember it later. So what can you do if you’re struggling with reading comprehension and want to improve your skills? There are many practices you can try everyday to improve your comprehension skills.
If you’re reading something particularly difficult to understand, it sometimes helps to read the text out loud. Hearing the words instead of just reading internally can sometimes trigger a different part of the brain and allow you to connect with the material. Before you begin reading a text, ask yourself some pre-reading questions. Some examples of questions you could ask are: What is the topic of the material? What do you already know about the subject? Why is this material important? You can also scan over the text to get a basic idea of what it’s about. You can quickly scan the title, headings and first sentences in the paragraph to get a sense of what the material is referring to. Once you’ve done this, your brain is already working with the information. You have a foundation of what the subject is before you begin getting into the details. Often when reading a lot of material, especially difficult texts, it’s easy for your focus to drift off. You can read an entire page and not really comprehend any of it. If you’ve read a section of any writing and you’ve not understood it, try to read it slowly again and summarize what you’ve read. Another great way to understand something you’re reading is to explain it to someone else. Putting the information into your own words is a helpful strategy for understanding the material. If you’re able to explain it well to someone else, you probably have a good idea of what you’ve read. Another good strategy for reading comprehension is to take notes while you’re reading. Write down the most important information and focus on the main ideas. This is similar to the idea of explaining it to another person. It gives your brain another medium to interact with the information and an opportunity to put things into your own words. This also provides a way to write down questions or words that you don’t understand. Words you don’t know, you can look up later. Sometimes people get stuck in a cycle of re-reading the same sentence over and over because it doesn’t make sense to them. Try to avoid this strategy because you can often decipher the meaning of a section as you continue to read. The context of the sentence can often give you a much better understanding of the meaning. If you’re struggling to stay focused on a section of material, you can use your finger or a pen to read along. This is an easy way to keep yourself on track and pay attention. This “Pointer Method” can also help you read faster. If you don’t want to use a pen or your pointer finger, you can also use an index card to cover up the part of the text you’re not reading yet to stay focused. If you’re reading page after page but not comprehending any part of it, it may be time to take a break. If the material is an assignment, try yto break it up over several days. Some texts are just harder to understand because they’re full of words and ideas that you may be unfamiliar with. If this is the case, it can be helpful to give your brain a break to digest the new information.
Now another question arises that is why is reading important? What are the benefits of it? There are many ways by which reading significantly benefits your life. Empathy is an important character trait people can develop. It helps us relate to other people and encourages us to be kind and considerate of other people’s feelings. As it turns out, reading can actually help improve empathy. When people read stories about other people’s lives, it helps them develop the skills to understand the world through another person’s perspective. This is a key element in being empathetic towards others. One way reading does this is through improving something called “theory of the mind.” Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states like beliefs, intents, desires or emotions to others and to understand that other people have different beliefs, intents and desires than our own. When you read literary fiction, you’re deepening your understanding of other people’s thoughts, emotions and desires. This understanding can be used in real life to try to understand and relate to other people, no matter what their background is. If you want to have an impressive vocabulary, pick up a book. It’s much easier to learn vocabulary from a book than from memorizing words in the dictionary. That’s because you’re learning the words contextually. The words make sense within the context of what you’re reading so it makes it easier to remember later. Another amazing benefit of reading is it improves your brain. When you read something, it ignites your neural pathways. While reading, your brain must remember facts and details such as characters, plots and subplots. As your brain retains this information, you’re creating new memories. That means new synapses are being created, and old ones are being strengthened. This improves your short term and long term memory functions.
Whether you’re doing it for work or for pleasure, reading can be extremely beneficial for your brain, health and general well-being. It can even make you more compassionate towards people around you. For increased reading comprehension, remember to take your time to understand what you’re reading. Give yourself several days to digest difficult material and take breaks when you need to. If you’re feeling stressed about understanding a text, try the tips laid out in this article. The handy user-friendly suggestions can help you tackle that difficult assignment so you can get back to your favorite fiction.

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