Reading Strategies for Effective Comprehension

Reading & Thinking Strategies Across Text Types

• Reading is a cognitive process of decoding symbols to derive meaning from a text.
• Reading is an interaction between the text and the reader.
• Reading is used to gain and share information and ideas for academic, personal, or professional purposes.

Effective Reading Strategies

• Getting an Overview of the Text
  • Previewing: Looking at readily visible parts of the text (titles, subtitles, visuals, graphs, pictures, charts)
    • Helps to familiarize with text content and focus on important information
    • Ways to preview the text properly:
      • Identify reading purpose
      • Examine titles and subtitles
      • Browse the introduction and conclusion of the text
      • Look at visual elements
• Using Context Clues
  • Context clues are words, phrases, and sentences surrounding unfamiliar words which help to understand the meaning of an unknown word
• Using Connotation and Denotation
  • Denotation: The basic, precise, literal meaning of a word (found in dictionaries)
  • Connotation: The positive, negative, or neutral feelings, ideas, or associations with a word.
    • Connotations are affected by social overtones, emotional meanings, or cultural implications
  • Examples: "father" – denotation: male parent; connotation: love & respect. "daddy" –denotation: male parent; connotation: love, familiarity, childhood.
• Positive Connotation: Favorable association towards a word.
• Negative Connotation: Unfavorable feelings or ideas towards a word.
• Neutral Connotation: Impartial associations towards a word.

Skimming and Scanning

• Skimming: Looking for the main point of a reading and identifying ideas that develop it.
  • It involves moving eyes rapidly along pages and tracing your finger, which speeds up reading.
  • Objective of skimming: quick read-through to get a bird's eye view of the content.
  • Advantage: Reading maximum text in less time
  • Includes: introduction, headings, subheadings, and conclusion.
• Scanning: Looking for specific information.
  • Objective of scanning: thorough lookout for specific information.
  • Method of reading : Selective
  • Advantage: Finding all required information
  • Includes: Reading whole text carefully

Types of Context Clues

• Synonyms: Words or phrases similar in meaning to the unknown word.
• Antonyms: Words that reveal the opposite meaning in relation to the unknown word.
  • Words like "althought", "but", "despite", "instead", "in contrast", "unlike", "however", "even though", "on the contrary", and "conversely" usually precede antonyms to indicate contrasting ideas.
• Examples: Specific details in a text to clarify the meaning of a word.

Explanations and Definitions

• Clues to describing unknown terms
• Phrases like “because” or “that is” may be explanations.
• Terms like "is," "means," "is defined as," and "refers to" are used with definitions.

Situations

• The meaning of a word changes depending on its context or usage.