Comprehension is an integral aspect of reading. As a person reads, they try to understand and exact meaning for improved overall awareness of whatever they are reading. The team of Evan Bass Men’s Clinic mentions that improving reading comprehension skills can go a long way in making the activity of reading easier and more enjoyable.

Evan Bass Men’s Clinic marks a few reading comprehension skills

Reading comprehension implies to the ability to actually understand what one is reading. It is an active and intentional part of reading, and takes place before, during and after a person reads something. Being able to comprehend what one is reading would allow people to extract meaning from the text and effectively realize what the author is trying to convey. Reading comprehension has two components, the first is text comprehension and the second is vocabulary knowledge. Vocabulary knowledge refers to the ability to grasp and understand the language being used. On the other hand, text comprehension is the use of this language to develop an awareness of what the meaning is behind the text.

There are certain vital skills necessary for developing reading comprehension, like:

• Decoding: The development of phonemic awareness is critical for reading and comprehension. Decoding skills would help a person to recognize individual sounds in words and subsequently link them to letters. This allows a person to read and understand words that they may have heard before but have not seen written. To develop and hone decoding skills, one should first learn to identify the sounds in words and practice matching them with the corresponding letters. It would also be a good idea to engage in activities like word games, singing songs and repeating rhymes to build decoding skills.

• Fluency: Fluency refers to the skill-set that allows a person to become an expert in speaking or reading a certain language. It can involve their ability to words by sight, understand their meaning as well as decode new vocabulary without sounding it out. Fluency is also linked to one’s ability to read fast, clearly and error-free, in the right tone and comprehend the text being read immediately. By reading more books one can improve their overall reading fluency. As one encounters new words regularly while reading, their word recognition abilities shall automatically improve.

• Vocabulary: It is prudent to have an extensive vocabulary in order to build reading comprehension. One’s vocabulary would have a direct impact on their ability to understand the words they read and interpret the meaning of new words. Good vocabulary helps improve text comprehension, make connections between old and new terms, as well as allow readers to effectively grasp context and express ideas clearly. Readers may expand their vocabulary by reading a wider variety of books, engaging in diverse conversations, playing word games, creating word lists with antonyms and synonyms, and so on.

The team of Evan Bass Men’s Clinic mention that good reading comprehension skills would elevate one’s overall enjoyment of reading, and have a positive impact on both their personal and professional life. Knowing how to understand and comprehend a text would boost one’s knowledge in specific areas and assist them in learning new skills and information faster.