COMPREHENSION SKILLS

By: Lenie Mangubat

COMPREHENSION SKILLS

If you could skim for the topic sentence, scan for specific information, note details, get the main idea, infer, sense cause and effect relationships, recognize fact and opinion, predict outcomes, then you show the ability to comprehend.

These skills could be classified into three levels:

Reading the lines or literal

comprehension

Reading between the lines or

interpretative comprehension

Reading beyond the lines or critical

comprehension

Skimming for the topic sentence

TO SKIM, examine the title and headings, read the first paragraph and last paragraph of the text to find out its main idea. Or you can also read the whole first paragraph and the first sentence of each of the succeeding paragraphs.

Scanning for important

informationTO SCAN for important information, direct your reading to specific paragraph where you can locate the answers to your questions or those which your teacher asks. Read quickly.

Noting details

TO NOTE details, read the text slowly, remember items in it, relate them to the topic sentences of each paragraph or differentiate them from the main ideas the passage conveys,

Getting the main idea

TO GET the main idea of the passage, look for the most important thing the author says or find the central thought of the passage.

InferringTO INFER, read between the lines or look information that is not stated in the text by relying on clues given by the author.

Sensing cause and effect relationships

TO SENSE cause and effect relationships, look for signal words, such as for, thus as, since, therefore, as a result, consequently, in order that, so that, and because. A cause indicates the reason for something. An effect shows the result of some action or cause

Recognizing fact and opinion

TO RECOGNIZE fact and opinion, find out if the statement can be proved true or false and if it expresses attitudes, evaluations, judgments, or even predicts the future respectively.

Predicting outcomes

TO PREDICT outcomes, analyze the events and study their relationships. Then decide what happens next or make a guess about what you think may happen as a result of several events.