Introduction:

In the report we will be focusing on the role of building

comprehension and retention in order to improve the learning for
people/students. We will also be looking at the advantages and
disadvantages of building comprehensions and retention. A
comprehension is when you have to ability to understand something.
Retention is the ability to remember and hold something that you
may have seen or heard. Comprehension and retention are very
important to us in our everyday lives.

Literature Review:
A comprehension is the ability to understand something. An example
of a comprehension would be how well you have understood a topic
in a subject. A reading comprehension is the ability to understand
and to be able to find out the meaning of the written words. There
are many types of reading strategies and one of the reading
strategies is called Skimming. Skimming is when you are going
through a text to find the main information about it. In skim reading
you are going to roughly read from 400-700wpm. Examples of skim
reading would be when you are in an English exam and you have to
look through an essay to find the answer to the question, you are
more likely to use skim reading so that you are able to find the
answers quicker. Another example would be when you are looking
through a newspaper, but you are in a rush so in this case you would
be skim reading to find the important and main news and then you
would be able to go to school. Studies shows us more people are
likely to skim read something. This was found out and proved with
evidence during an experiment where an article was lamented and
put onto the internet and they found out that only 31% people read
the article fully. (Michael S. Rosenwald 04/18/2014) Another type of
reading skills is active reading. This is when you are reading
something very slowly also you would be re-reading a piece of text.
You would know when people are using the active reading skill is
when they highlight and underline key words, they would be also be
drawing around the key points and they would be making notes
around them. Another technique you would notice about an Active
reader is that once they have finished reading about something, they
would prefer to tell someone else what they have read about. There
was a study that was conducted to enrich the learning experiences.
They put two groups of people, one was undergraduate student and
the other group was graduate students. When they were given e-
books as a class material and when this was given, there was more
positive reviews from the graduate students however 63% of the
undergraduates wanted to check out the E-books more. At the end
of the study there was an 78.6% of undergraduate students gave
positive reviews about the E-book readers. However more than half
of each students preferred to books that were printed out, but they
did state that they would like the E-books to do their reading
on.(Sunghee Shin, 2014)

Deep reading is reading that is done slowly and during this reading
time the reader would be going through many thoughts while
reading. Deep learning is when people learning things when they
transform ideas that are given to them into their own preferred
personalised knowledge. Deep learning is important to people
because people that are deep learner are more likely to understand
the meaning of the text that they are reading. Also, since deep
learners get very engaged with the reading, they are more likely to
remember the information for the long-term and this would mean
that they would be able to achieve good grades in their exams as
they are able to remember an information for a long time. Higher
order thinking skills is when you apply the things that you have learnt
into the real-life world. The higher order thinking skill is important
because this is the skill that is used in order to improve and develop
deep reading skills and active reading skills. Also, the higher order
thinking skills would also help you improve and develop the
comprehension and retention skills. An advantage of higher order
thinking skill is that it would enable people to retain information that
they have learnt and another advantage is that they would also be
able to use the information that they have learnt and they would be
able to apply this into the real-life world.

Discussion:
A comprehension is the ability to understand something. Retention is
the ability to remember and hold something that you may have seen
or heard. Comprehension and Retention are important because this
allows you to be able to understand something that is given to you
and for example if you are given a text for an exam. You would be
able to read the text and understand the text and this would mean
that you be able to get hold of information’s that you would need
and apply this to the exam. This would mean that you will be able to
pass the exam, and this would allow you to be more successful in
your studies.

One obstacle a student might face for a comprehension is that the

vocabulary in the piece of text they are reading is hard for them to
understand or they may not know the definition of a word in the
text. This may cause a problem for the person is because if the word
they cannot understand is a key word in the text and if the
misunderstand the word then it potentially put them in answering a
question wrong and this may lead them into failing the exam.
Another obstacle that a student might face for retention is that the
person who is trying to learn is not able to remember something for
more than half an hour. This is a problem for the student because if
he learns something and then moves onto the next topic, he would
have forgotten about the topic that he previously learnt and this
would cause the person not being able to study or remember
anything that he/she is reading. Another obstacle for comprehension
is that if they have a language difficulty. This would be a very big
obstacle for the student is because the person is not going to be able
to understand anything and this will cause them to be poor towards
their studies. Another obstacle a person may come across is that
they may not be able to comprehend the text that they are reading.

Recommendations:
One-way people can overcome an obstacle which they can’t
comprehend is that, when they are in the similar situation next time
they should practise by finding articles and texts that they don’t
understand and they should practise by trying to understand them
and finding method to understand a text or an article during the
practise time so you will be able to use that method when you are in
another situation where you are not able to comprehend. Another
obstacle is that the person that is trying to remember things can’t
remember something for more than half an hour. One way to
overcome this problem is that they should start practising on
becoming an active reader and this can be done by asking someone
to help you out, whilst you are reading something you could ask
someone to come and sit next to you and while you are reading
something they could test you or they could test you straight after
you have finished reading.

Conclusion:
Overall, in the report we have gone through many key information
on comprehension and retention. We have managed to go through
what the definition of comprehension is, and we have also managed
to go through the definition of retention. One of important things we
talked about today was the different styles of reading. For example,
Skim reading, Scan reading and active reading. We also went through
real life studies that were taken place in order to show which type of
readers the people are. There were also the obstacles that people
would come across for comprehension’s and retentions and also
found out possible ways to overcome the problems which would
eventually lead into a successful academic life.
Reference:

((Michael S. Rosenwald 04/18/2014) – The Washington post/

Regional business news

(Sunghee Shin, 2014) – international Journal of Distance Education

Technologies