Reading Comprehension

Strategies
Teacher : Mesil. L

All levels
What is reading comprehension ?
 Comprehending (understanting) a text means extracting the recquired
information from it as effeciently as possible. = without / the least waste .
wasting your time and effort – in an organised way = major goals.

Apply reading
 Reading a scientific article strategies understanding the information .
But it is not enough to understand the overall meaning of the text; more
detailed comprehension is necessary. Therefore , it is important to take the
following elements into consideration:
 What do we read ?
Novels, short stories, tales; other literary texts and passages (e.g.
essays, diaries,anecdotes, biographies) Plays Poems, Newspapers and
magazines , etc.
 Why do we read ?
For pleasure / for information
 How do we read ? =
What are the different strategies or effective techniques used by
students to succeed in reading comprehension ?

1-Predicting = To predict = to guess = to anticipate = to make hypotheses.

It is not only a technique but a skill considered as basic to reading process.
It involves the faculty of guessing what is to come next, involves thinking
ahead while reading and anticipating information and events in the text making use of
information from the text such as titles , headings = title at the head of a section ,
pictures and diagrams .Readers confirm or deny predictions with support from the text.
Paratexts : titles or sutitles , sources , author pictures etc

2)Skimming = to skim = to read superficially

It is used by readers to get “a general idea about the content of printed
materials through reading the text quickly i.e. in this strategy, readers will
look for something quite specific or get general ideas before putting effort
into close reading”( Grellet,1999, P, 2-25). For instance, One does not want to
read the whole texts or articles; s/he may use various techniques to skim:
 Use of quick glance through the pages (2) Notice
the titles and headings and subheadings (3) Read the
opening sentence and the conclusion carefully (4)
Read the first ( topic sentence ) and the last sentence
of each paragraph in order to gain the main idea of the
main points .So, skimming is one of strategies that
require readers to read quickly in order to get an
overview/the general idea or gist of a section.
Scanning :
we only try to locate specific information and often
we do not even follow the linearity of the passage to do
so. We simply let our eyes wander over the text until
we find what we are looking for, whether it be a name,
a date, or a less specific piece of information.
You know what you're looking for, so you are
concentrating based on finding a particular answer. It
involves moving your eyes quickly down the page
seeking specific words and phrases. In this way, we
can say that scanning is reading quickly to locate
specific information .
4) Inferring :
 When using this strategy , the student plays the role of a
textual detective. It helps students to understand things
that are not made explicit in the text. It’s what we mean
when we say to students “Read between the lines!”
Rather than relying on what the writer has articulated
directly in the text, inferring meaning requires the student
to look for clues to figure out the meaning behind the text.
This demands critical thinking on the part of the student
and pushes the student to a higher level of comprehension

The inferences are the conclusions that a reader

draws about the unsaid passage based on what is
actually said by the author. = intrepreting = ‫التأويل‬
5)Summerizing = to check student’s understanding
It is the last strategy that can be used by readers, it
requires the readers to organize or restate the
information or the main ideas of a given text by
his/her own style after their comprehension or in
other words, taking a lot of information and creating a
condensed version= a version that contains the same
amount of important ideas that covers only the main
points.
Summarizing teaches students how to discern= identify the
most important ideas in a text, how to ignore irrelevant
information, and how to integrate the central ideas in a
meaningful way. Teaching students to summarize improves
their cognitive ability about what is read = improve your
UNDERSTANDING.
References

1. Nathan Amstrong : Speed Reading (Increase Your Reading Speed By

300% In Less Than 24 Hours).2015.
2. Françoise Grellet : Developping reading skills. Cambridge University
Press 1981.
3. Rouai Souhila: The Use of Reading Strategies in Improving Reading
Comprehension. Master dissertation. UNIVERSITY KASDI MERBAH
OUARGLA. 2013/2014