Reading ability is a cognitive disposition acquired over years of learning and practice - both conscious and unconscious. Reading ability depends, to a greater extent, on readability - the attribute of the reading material. You should not assume that your reading ability is poor by assessing the speed with which you have read, say a passage on philosophy, in a given time. Even if you have previous reading in philosophy, you require more time to read a philosophy passage with fairly good comprehension, owing not only to the abstraction involved but also to the implicit meaning underlying such text than read a passage on a concrete readable text.
At the same time you should realize that there are certain cognitive behaviours that are peculiar to efficient readers, viz., concentration, mental translation as one navigates through the passage. Summation, connecting ideas, inferring, judging the material read etc.
 When do we consider a passage readable?
Or why do test takers differ in their ability to read?
There are differences between the reading skills required in an academic environment and those that are required on an aptitude test. If you have a good sense of the passage structure and gist of paragraphs, you'll have no problem navigating through the text.
Read involved
An involved reader:
He thinks about what he is reading and assimilates denotations
He goes beyond the denotations, searches for connotations (implicit ideas)
Translates ideas into his own language
Poses questions to himself as he reads
Skims through illustrative matter and scans through meaty points
Looks for both matter discussed, and the speaker's points of view
As you read across the passage, build a cognitive map of the information assimilated - while reading you should keep asking these questions:
What is the topic the author is dealing with?
Does he give reasons or examples to support his main thesis? How do these examples or reasons support the claim?
What shift does the author have in mind when moving on to another paragraph?
What bearing does this paragraph have on the author's main idea?
Is he proposing a new idea?
Is he making any recommendations?
Challenging notions? Criticizing policies?
Much of our reading is neither accurate nor thoughtful. When relaxed, we naturally skip and skim. Ordinarily, such reading neither deserves nor receives careful attention. But, often, we attempt to read closely reasoned and fast packed texts. Reading to understand involves attention, retention and awareness. The reading of genuinely important material must be painstakingly careful. Comprehension passages in tests need to be carefully read:
-to gain and understand accurate information and ideas.
-to recognize author's organization of the content and style of writing.
-to interpret author's intent and
-to analyze and evaluate the textual matter
Reading effectively is reading with both comprehension and speed. An efficient reader reads thought units, not word by word. Your aim should be to reduce the number of fixations, and lengthen the eye span. Your reading rate will increase as you learn to do this efficiently and so will your comprehension. A skilful reader does not work with isolated units but with context - what precedes and follows the particular material being read. A good reader rarely loses time by having to refer to the beginning of a sentence or paragraph. Rather, the thought will have been carried through in one series of lengthened glances.
The best way of learning to read with speed as well as comprehension is to "read with your mind assisted by your eyes". Doing this will enhance comprehension by reducing the number of fixations and increasing concentration. Practice finding main thoughts in a passage and separating them from purely illustrative matter. Learn to find key words and phrases that summate the main ideas of the passage. These steps will greatly increase reading speed, although you must not forget that different kinds of material require different reading speeds.
An efficient reader assimilates information that is read and translates it into his own language. Recall of information exactly as it is, is neither possible nor necessary. Instead, gather the gist of the information, form opinions and draw conclusions. Careful reading of any selection should lead to an understanding of the central theme and purpose as well as organization of the main thoughts.
If you're methodi c , that is good for your academic reading. For aptitude test preparation, take the road not taken. You can't approach an aptitude test in a casual, piecemeal way. If you want to maximize your likelihood of success, you have to take advantage of the unconventional approaches.
The number of passages ranges from 2 to 4; the number of questions ranges from 6 to 10 and the length of the passages ranges from 7 to 250 words. The passages are either run-on matter or with indented paragraphs. Therefore, be sensitive to issue of topic, scope, structure and source of such passages in order to draw from the repertoire of your tactics to maximise your performance.
In sum, read to locate those crucial ideas:
to find out where answers to specific questions lie
to get the gist of each paragraph
to distinguish opinions or interpretations from factual assertions; this is an important skill in reading
to attack the passage for author's view
when asked for meanings of words/phrases look for nearby context
finally get the author's purpose in writing the text, to help you answer inferential questions (if any)
Know these facts
Different questions require different strategies.
The reading comprehension questions are of varying difficulties. |
