Strategies for reading comprehension#TEFL (widya nanda)

As the student progress through school, they are asked to read increasingly complex informational and graphical texts in their courses. The ability to understand and use the information in these texts is key to a student’s success in learning. Successful students have a repertoire of strategies to draw upon, and know how to use them in different contexts. Struggling students need explicit teaching of these strategies to become better readers.[1]

There are 10 such strategies of which can be practically applied to your classroom techniques.


  1. 1.      Identify the purpose in reading[2]

Many times we give students their purpose for reading. We tell them that they will be reading to learn about particular topic such as the war of 1812 in social studies, doing long division in math, the French impressionist in art, or habitats for various creatures in science. Providing students with their purpose for reading is fine, but it is also important to develop instructional strategies in which students are led to a predetermined purpose for reading or to decide for themselves what their purpose will be.

Various purposes include reading to: be entertained, be informed, be persuaded, learn how to do something, analyze the author, reflect upon and extend personal experience and prior knowledge, generate questions for further research about the topic or concept, and gather information for a discussion.

It is important that students keep a purpose in mind while they are reading in order to sort and organize new information, connect it to their purposes for reading, and be able to articulate and justify how the information they have gained helps them achieve the purposes for reading.[3]

So, you must make sure the students know their purpose reading something.

  1. 2.      Use graphemic rules and patterns to aid in bottom-up decoding

At the beginning levels of learning English, one of difficulties study encounter in learning to read is making the correspondences between spoken written English. In many cases, learners have become acquainted with language and have some difficulty learning English spelling conventions. They need hints and explanations about certain English orthographic rules some peculiarities. While you can often assume that one-to-one grapheme-phone correspondences will be acquired with ease, other relationships pre difficult. [4]

  1. 3.      Use efficient silent reading techniques for improving fluency.

Students should be able to self-select texts that they are interested in, as well as that are at their own reading level to independently practice their reading comprehension strategies. Targeted students demonstrated more on-task behaviors while reading when they chose the books to be read. This is one of the most effective strategies for increasing vocabulary, fluency, and overall reading skills (Routman, 1998). It is imperative that the students are monitored carefully, as well as held accountable for the material that has been read (Routman, 1998). Occasionally, it is necessary to assign only a page or so at a time, until meta-cognition, and self-correcting use is evident (Routman, 1998).[5]

  1. 4.      Skim the text main idea

When you SKIM, you read quickly to get the main idea of a paragraph, page, chapter, or article, and a few (but not all) of the details.[6] Skimming allows you to read quickly to get a general sense of a text so that you can decide whether it has useful information for you. You may also skim to get a key idea. After skimming a piece, you might decide that you want or need to read it in greater depth.[7]


  1. 5.      Scan the text for specific information           

When you SCAN, you move your eyes quickly down a page or list to find one specific detail. Scanning allows you to locate quickly a single fact, date, name, or word in a text without trying to read or understand the rest of the piece. You may need that fact or word later to respond to a question or to add a specific detail to something you are writing.


  1. 6.      Use semantic mapping or clustering

A semantic mapping  is a way to visually organize your understanding of information. It is hierarchical in nature, beginning with the subject or topic at the top or side of the page, and then branching into subtopics and details.[8]

The strategies of semantic mapping, or grouping ideas into meaningful clusters helps the reader to provide some order to the chaos. Making such semantic maps can be done individually, but they make for a productive group work technique as students collectively induce order and hierarchy to passage. [9]


  1. 7.      Guess when you aren’t certain

This is an extremely broad category. In this category, the learners can use guessing to their advantage. They should guessing game and the sooner learners understand this game. The key to successful guessing is to make it reasonably accurate. You can help learners to become accurate guessers by encouraging them to use effective compensation strategies.[10]

  1. 8.      Analyze Vocabulary

Vocabulary is also an important component to reading comprehension. Some researchers believe that vocabulary is the strongest component of proper reading comprehension and studies have shown that students who have a large working vocabulary receive better grades than students who do not (Stahl & Fairbanks, 1986).[11] At the beginning of a unit, pre-teach important concepts and unfamiliar vocabulary.[12]

There are several techniques are useful here:

  1. Look for prefixes.
  2. Look for suffixes.
  3. Look for roots.
  4. Look for grammatical.
  5. Look at the semantic.


  1. 9.      Distinguish between literal and implied meanings

This requires the application of sophisticated top-down processing skills. The fact that not all language can be interpreted appropriately by attending to its literal, syntactic surface structure makes special demands on readers. Implied meaning usually has to be derived from processing pragmatic information.[13]

  1. 10.  Capitalize on discourse markers to process relationship.

Many discourse markers in English signal relationship among ideas as expressed through phrases, clauses, and sentences. A clear comprehension of such markers can greatly enhance learners’ reading efficiency.[14]

[2] H. Douglas Brown, Teaching by Principle an interactive approach to language Pedagogy(San Francisco State University) pp.366

[3] Conni Medina, Successful Strategies For Reading in The Content Areas(grades 3-5)2nd Edition, pp 19


[6] Strategies for Improving Secondary Students’ and Writing skill pp 40-41

[9]H. Douglas Brown, Teaching by Principle an interactive approach to language Pedagogy(San Francisco State University) pp.368

[10] Ibid, pp.369

[12] Reading Higher-Making Connections Across The Curriculum p 7-8

[13] H. Douglas Brown, Teaching by Principle an interactive approach to language Pedagogy(San Francisco State University) pp.370

[14] Ibid, pp.371


Brown, Douglas H. Teaching by Principles an Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. San Francisco State University: Third Edition.

Medina, Conni. Successful Strategies for Reading in The Content Areas (Grades 3-5): Third Edition.


http://www.Mharvey 644(1) correct (1).pdf

Reading Higher-making Connections Across the Curriculum

Harvey, Michele. Strategies for Improving Secondary Students’ Reading and Writing Skills: Lynchburg College.

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