When reading a piece of text, whether it is a story, an article or an instruction, it is very important that you understand, or comprehend, exactly what the writer means. We call this comprehension and it means understanding or comprehending the meaning of all the parts of a piece of writing.
One way of being able to be good in reading comprehension is to read the passage fully to really understand what the writer is intending. It is like reading a book. You can’t read a book for the first few pages and decide what the book is all about. You will need to read the entire book to really understand what the book was about. Otherwise, you will miss the suspense and if it is a murder mystery you will not know who the killer was! This also applies when reading facts. Take for example a train time table. If you don’t study the entire information on your proposed journey you would not be able to tell your friends or relatives your travel plans.
Similarly, when you read a passage you need to read the entire passage before coming to a conclusion. If you are able to identify facts then you could make some inferences but when you look at non-facts then it is better to wait until you have read the entire passage. Also, it is important to identify the characters in the passage so that you can relate to them with your own experiences and similarly, identify with other non-human characters of the passage and relate to them. Only then would you be able to get the full meaning of the passage and find out what the writer intended.
When reading words, sentences and paragraphs in a passage ensure that you take the time to read through completely and then understand what is meant and then act. Read the text below and then take this quiz to see how well you have understood what the writer was trying to get across.