Essential Skills for Reading Comprehension

Decoding: Involves connecting sounds to letters, crucial for reading.
Fluency: Enhances reading speed and comprehension.
Vocabulary: Essential for understanding the text.
Coherent Devices: Tools that help maintain clarity and understanding in text.
- Repetition of Key Terms: Look for recurring words or phrases.
- Synonyms: Words with similar meanings.
- Pronouns: Replace nouns to avoid repetition (e.g., this, that).
- Transitional Words: Connect ideas (e.g., however, therefore).
- Sentence Pattern: Maintains coherence in ideas presented.
Reasoning and Background Knowledge: Essential for making inferences.
- Inference: Making educated guesses about what happens next.
Working Memory and Attention: Focus enables information retention; working memory aids in learning new material.

Concept Map: Visual organizer showing a central idea and related concepts.
Flow Chart/Sequence Chart: Illustrates a series of steps or events.
Compare/Contrast (Venn Diagram): Identifies similarities and differences.
Cause and Effect Diagram: Highlights relationships between events.
Graphs (Pie, Line, Bar): Visual representations to compare two subjects.
Main Idea and Details Chart: Shows hierarchical relationships of major ideas.
Timeline: Illustrates events over a specific period.

Coquettish: Characterized as flirtatious or seductive.
Key Elements of a Story:
- Plot: Sequence of events in a narrative.
  - Exposition: Sets the stage at the beginning.
  - Rising Action: Conflict builds as the main character faces challenges.
  - Climax: Peak of the story; major conflict confronts the protagonist.
  - Falling Action: Narrative slows as it approaches resolution.
  - Resolution (Denouement): Conclusion of the story's conflict.
- Setting: The time and location of the narrative.
- Characterization: Techniques authors use to develop characters.
  - Direct Characterization: Explicitly tells about the character.
  - Indirect Characterization: Revealed through actions, thoughts, and dialogue.
  - Methods of Characterization:
    - Physical description.
    - Actions and behaviors.
    - Inner thoughts.
    - Reactions from other characters.
    - Dialogue.

Analytical Listening: Understanding root causes and assessing spoken information.
Adverb of Affirmation: Confirms the truth of a statement (e.g., certainly, absolutely).
Adverb of Negation: Denies the action of a verb (e.g., not, never).
Analytical Listening Skills:
- Analyze rather than summarize short stories; provide commentary and evaluation.
Introductory Paragraph Elements:
- Background: Relevant information (who, where, what, why).
- Thesis: Subject and opinion.
Development Paragraph: Varies in length and content.
Character Evaluation:
- Central character clarity.
- Easily definable supporting characters.
- Authenticity of dialogue.
- Appropriate setting.
- Authentic or artificial conflicts.
- Suspense elements.
- Insight into story ending.
- Plot structure originality.
Closing Paragraph: Summarizes general impressions of the story.