HOW TO COMBAT POOR READING COMPREHENSION

JOSEPHINE C. DUNGO

We may not know it, but reading comprehension is a problem among students.

Kids can read, yes, because they know all the words. But do they understand what they read?

What can cause poor reading comprehension? Among the factors are disinterest, struggling with decoding individual words, difficult text, deficit in working memory, visual processing disorder, and limited vocabulary.=

What can happen to students with poor reading comprehension skills? This may lead to poor grades. Kids who don’t understand what they read affects their ability to succeed in school. Reading comprehension is essential to all subjects, including science and math - and even in tests and exams. If students don’t have good reading comprehension, this leads to low grades and poor test scores.

How can teachers know if students have poor reading comprehension? First, if they can’t answer questions about what they just read, they don’t understand the logical sequence of a story, and are unable to tell the story after reading it.

Also, they did not understand what they just read if they can’t connect individual sentences or paragraphs of text together to make sense of what they’ve read, when they don’t know the meaning of individual words, and lose interest in reading or give up quickly.

Among the causes of poor reading comprehension is disinterest and boredom, which causes children not to pay attention to what they’re reading.

Also a problem is decoding individual words which slows down or prevents reading comprehension. If the assigned material includes too many words a child doesn’t know, they’ll focus on decoding rather than understandi ng.

Also, difficult text is a challenge to some students. Others get frustrated that they just give up. Also associated with the problem is oral language deficit where children have limited vocabulary and oral reading fluency, thus have difficulty understanding written text.

Teachers can use some strategies to improve poor reading comprehension, like fun and interesting stories which engage kids.

According to research, kids learn faster and remember more when they’re enjoying what they’re doing and having fun.

Difficulty in deciding can get in the way of kids understanding a story. Teachers should make sure that children have sufficient decoding skills. Also, there should be appropriate materials for a child’s reading level. Scanning is also a strategy, which involves looking at the title, summary, review, end-of-chapter questions, key words, headings, and the like.

--oOo-The author is Master Teacher I at San Basilio Elementary School