Reading Hacks for Better Comprehension

published on Cavite Wisdom Publishing newspaper on 28 June to 04 July 2021

Reading may be a very sacred and highly valued activity to you. That’s quite understandable: reading is an incredibly pleasurable and highly meaningful engagement. It serves as a wonderful refuge after a terribly busy day. If resorted to for pastime, it nurtures up your intellect and develops your imagination during those idle moments of your life. No doubt, reading occupies a great intermittent stretch in a person’s lifetime.

Given these few out of the many tempting benefits you may enjoy from reading, you probably want to make the most out of every material you pick. The more you absorb the content, the more enjoyable your reading is. Here are some hacks to help you imbibe information through reading and expand what you already know, all leading to better comprehension.

Pay attention to the title. The title gives you, either directly or abstractly, a comprehensive glimpse on the message of the text. In fact, there are writers who conclude their composition via crafting a title for the write-up. This means that the title was designed as a window to the entire content of the piece. It usually puts in a nutshell the perception and main idea the author tried to convey.

As soon as you start reading, detach yourself from the environment. Liberate yourself from the demands of your engagements. Focus only to the ideas the text delivers. Think as though the material were written just for you. Remember: you cannot give equal level of attention to everything around you. Simply put, you cannot serve two masters at the same time.

While reading, you need to give way for reminiscence. These flashback moments strengthen the connection of the information from the material to the existing information in your mind. Good readers deliberately relate the ideas found on the text to what they already know. This helps them to comprehend the piece via interpreting every detail there using their prior knowledge: they apply their empirical and theoretical knowledge to appreciate, assimilate, and visualize the incoming information. You also need to hesitate whenever related memories involuntarily pop up on your mind. Reminiscence, whether voluntary or otherwise, helps you make sense of the material to a great extent.

Consider every reading pleasurable and fruitful. Set your mind that the text is important for you: it adds new knowledge to you and pitches in to your present or future achievements. In case of fiction, think of the text as a stimulus of your untapped emotions—those that are not normally felt everyday. Treat the material as a contributor to your intellectual development as you form the better version of yourself.

You may want to free up your mind of cobwebs. Those flimsy thoughts may be your mental reservations either on the material or the writer. Negative perception on the text may arise from poor grammatical construction of sentences, loose connection of ideas, lack of appropriate transitions, or the like. Unless your purpose of reading is to study grammar, just shrug off these flaws and look straightly at the message of the text. Similarly, you may have unfavorable perception of the author, which may have been shaped by previously read pieces written by that person, or even negative news circulating about the penman. In either case, treat every material with fresh feelings—that is, different from all other texts you have encountered.

Immerse yourself in the message of the material. Doing this engages your emotions and imagination of the scenarios depicted by the author. This helps you visualize and appreciate every detail you come across with. One test that you are already submersed in the text is if you can reasonably predict the next ideas conveyed by the succeeding sentences.

Try to internalize every piece of information. Internalization is the appreciation of the role of every piece of information towards the completion of the mother idea of the text. Strive to attend to every single idea, including minute details.

Recite in your own words the important thoughts. Repeatedly do this until you are satisfied that the information occupies a stable place in your memory. Said paraphrasing of ideas facilitates the storage of the information in your long-term memory, a repository where information stays longer than in short-term memory. This habit is highly called for whenever you’re preparing for exams or high-stakes activities such as investment presentations, project proposals, product promotion, and intellectual competitions. Another benefit this act provides is that you can gauge how good you understood the message delivered by the author through the text.

Consult a dictionary. Never dispense with this very important reference. Wordbooks give you the suitable meaning of a word in line with the context. The precise meaning of the word leads you to the accurate interpretation of the writer’s statements.

Don’t hesitate to reread. Reading the first time makes you armed with useful expectations on the sequence of ideas and partial comprehension of complex details in the text. When you read the material again, you will be in a better position to understand the ideas completely with the help of the background and partial understanding you just acquired from the first reading. In addition, repeat reading assists the storage of the information in your long-term memory. Finally, this habit adheres to the ever binding principle in learning—“Repetition is the key to mastery.”

Reward yourself after every striking or enlightening reading. This magnanimous act unconsciously conditions yourself to employ similar comprehension strategies towards succeeding readings. What you did in comprehending your last material, be it mentally or physically, would be unconsciously carried to the next text you will devour. This reward system would also imprint better on your memory the knowledge you acquired from the material you just read.

Sleep and eat well. Adequate sleep keeps your concentration underailed when reading, and enough intake of food fuels up your brain to sustain the comprehension processes, particularly during learning and memorization.

These reading habits make your reading more enjoyable through having the best understanding and absorption of messages embodied by the text. They put at par the operation of the human brain in learning and the memory processes. They also acknowledge how human behavior works in the course of learning. If employed, you would considerably assimilate the ideas brought to you by the reading material.

This article was also published on PTV News website on 02 April 2019. Click The link to said publication is https://ptvnews.ph/reading-hacks-for-better-comprehension/.