Reading Comprehension

Whether you think about it or not, when you read a book for whatever reason, leisure recreation, work, school, you are reading for comprehension. It is just that reading comprehension, if you have been taught how to read properly and encouraged to read regularly, will happen without conscious effort or distraction. Reading comprehension is what you have when you finish reading printed material and you understand what you have read. There are certainly many levels of reading comprehension.

There is a basic level of reading comprehension that is practiced in elementary school during reading and language classes. Beginning with the simplest books, the ones that have three and four words per page, per illustration, the new reader tries to figure out what the words mean. With picture books, young children have both the words and the pictures there imparting information for them to comprehend. Even before the child can read her first work, when a picture book is read to her, she will get the idea that the words describe the picture and she will understand the image and start developing reading comprehension.

When young readers move beyond the simple picture books to their first novels, they have undoubtedly had many, many practice sessions with reading a paragraph or two and answering questions about the words they have read. This is practice at reading comprehension. All of the standardized tests that students take throughout their formal education have a section in them called, reading comprehension. This section is there to measure the level of reading comprehension the student has achieved and gives and indication as to whether more work in that area is necessary or if the student is ready to move ahead at the prescribed grade level pace or may, in fact be way behind or way ahead. In either case, the student's teacher will, hopefully, adjust the next reading comprehension lessons for that student according to the competency level she is at in terms of reading comprehension.

The more practice young readers have in testing their reading comprehension, the more automatic the process will become until as teens and adults, reading for comprehension will be second nature. And once basic reading comprehension is achieved, the reader will also develop more subtle aspects to reading comprehension, including interpretation, understanding metaphors, allusions, similes, foreshadowing and symbolism for examples. Then the full appreciation for reading comprehension can be realized and reading will be one of the joys of a person's life.

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