Mastering the Art of Reading: Techniques to Boost Comprehension

Have you ever read and re-read a paragraph, or even just a sentence, and still couldn’t figure out what it meant? Even from this simple example, we can begin to understand the difference between basic reading skills and reading comprehension.

Mastering the art of reading involves more than merely decoding words on a page. When we are able to integrate what we read into our own understanding, reading becomes a gateway to knowledge, critical thinking, and effective communication. There are also a surprising number of health benefits to reading.

Even though you may think you mastered reading a long time ago, the fact is that we can always grow as readers. Whether you're a student aiming to excel academically or a professional who wants to feel more confident in navigating the literature in your field, the strategies below will pave the way for a more profound and enriching reading experience.

First, let’s dive a little deeper into what we mean by reading comprehension as well as the mechanics of reading, before we look into ways to improve reading abilities.

What is Reading Comprehension?

We can all remember working through standardized tests with sample paragraphs followed by multiple-choice questions. Rather than testing our knowledge of content that we learned in class, these reading comprehension questions probed our ability to make sense of the content in front of us. These questions tested how well we understood what we read.

The two fundamental skills that reading comprehension relies on are word reading, or decoding, and comprehension. This includes understanding the meaning of the words decoded, as well as the holistic meaning they generate together.

It’s interesting to note that training students to read silently to understand the material is a relatively recent pedagogic practice. At the turn of the 20th century in the United States, most students were encouraged to learn by rote memorization and oral recitation.

It was a pioneering psychologist, Edmund Burke Huey, who changed how educators viewed reading with his book, The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading (1908). Instead of focusing on performative acts of reading aloud, he encouraged the silent mode of reading which enables more efficient information processing.

Huey’s work has not reached everywhere. Over a hundred years later, there are still many institutes and academies where a student’s ability to “bark at print” is the main way their reading ability is assessed.

A solid foundation in reading comprehension is what allows students to continue building their body of knowledge and for professionals to distinguish themselves from the competition.

Declining Reading Comprehension

In a society inundated with print and online text, it might come as a surprise that reading comprehension is declining. Particularly since the pandemic, researchers have noted a global ebb in levels of reading comprehension. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) regularly tests the reading ability of 15-year-olds in 81 different countries. Between 2018 and 2022, they observed a 10-point decrease in test scores.

Even before the pandemic, levels of reading efficiency had been dwindling since 1960, especially among older students in grades 10-12. Some researchers have looked into the possible connection between increased screen time and decreased reading efficiency in children who already struggle with reading comprehension.

Even if the adult literacy rate of industrialized countries hasn’t been falling, the number of adults who report having read an entire book in the past year is only around 25%. This suggests that while people can read, reading habits have shifted toward consuming more short-form material, like articles and social media posts.

II. Basics of Reading

Reading is a complex cognitive act that involves the coordination of multiple visual and language processing areas of the brain. Reading comprehension also involves drawing on the brain’s memory centers to integrate the new information with what you’ve read previously.

When looking at reading from a learner’s perspective, it can be helpful to identify the distinct, yet interrelated skills, that reading requires.

Decoding Skills

Mastering the intricacies of decoding is the first step toward efficient reading. Decoding involves translating written symbols (graphemes) into their appropriate sounds (phonemes), which make up meaningful language. Whether you believe that spoken language is innate or something learned, it is a skill that humans have been honing far longer than reading, which only goes back about 5,000 years.

Due to this difference, far more humans struggle with decoding, the foundational stone of reading, than they do with acquiring spoken language. Research from the National Reading Panel shows that understanding the fundamental relationship between graphemes and phonemes is key.

Experts recommend phonics instruction to new readers to cultivate phonological awareness. This means they’re able to recognize which sound each written letter, or combination of letters, corresponds to. This type of instruction is in line with what has been called the “science of reading” by researchers and educators who wish to teach reading methods backed by empirical evidence.

Unfortunately for English readers, English spelling is far from phonetic. Other languages, such as Spanish, German, and Hindi, are much more phonetic. In fact, there are more reported incidents of dyslexia in English-speaking countries than in countries where the main instructional language is more phonetically consistent.

Readers and teachers need to identify if this first step of decoding is the obstacle to reading comprehension.

Decoding can be further broken down into related skills, such as:

Segmenting: This involves breaking down individual words into sounds. These can be smaller units than syllables, but they can also be multiple letters.
Blending: blending the sounds together to produce a word
Chunking: There are many recurrent patterns in language, like base words, prefixes, and affixes. Chunking involves breaking a word into sections to easily recognize recurrent patterns in new words.
Sight words: As a reader masters these skills, they will instantly recognize frequently used words, like “the” and “she,” which is the basis of reading fluency.

Vocabulary Acquisition

Once the basic mechanics of reading have been mastered, it is time to focus on building vocabulary. Reading comprehension is impossible without understanding the meaning of each word.

There are many ways to increase your vocabulary. Each method can be appropriate for different readers, like children, ESL students, and adults.

Flashcards
Dictionaries and thesauruses
Word games
Using new words in conversation
Reading

Particularly for advanced readers, continuing to read a variety of materials is one of the best ways to build one’s vocabulary. Integrated dictionaries that let you highlight and instantly read the definition of an unfamiliar word are handy features of e-reading devices and apps.

Building Fluency

Fluency is the bridge between decoding and comprehension, enabling readers to process information effortlessly. It is where the wrinkles in the reading process are ironed out. Eventually, the goal is for reading and understanding to happen simultaneously.

Entering the nitty-gritty of grammar can be illuminating for some people and utterly confusing for others. When advancing to more complex sentence structures, a basic understanding of how the parts of speech work together and how to identify sub-clauses can help support fluency.

Beginning readers are encouraged to read out loud so that a teacher or parent can gauge their reading fluency. For more advanced readers, reading silently is a great way to read more quickly and with more confidence.

Here are a few more ways to build reading fluency:

Practice sight words and build vocabulary so you automatically recognize more words as you read.
Pick reading material that is at your “frustration level”: a little challenging, but not so much that you give up.
Listen to audiobooks and follow along with a transcript.
Record yourself reading, and then listen to it to assess your fluency and expression.

Finding the Right Reading Material

A less obvious skill is choosing the right reading material. Even if you have mastered the above techniques, if you’re not reading books and articles that you can absorb, there’s little use in reading them.

This is because reading to understand depends on multiple cognitive factors, including emotional engagement, attention, and memory. Look for books that are in your own “Goldilocks zone”: not too easy and not too hard.

Material that is too simple won’t challenge you. In addition to potentially being boring, previously mastered material won’t push you to improve your reading skills. Material that is too difficult will prove frustrating and cause you to check out.

Keep the following things in mind when choosing reading material for yourself or for students:

Work your way up to reading complex material. Start with a general introduction to a topic, like a book in the Dummies series or Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introductions series.
If you’re working with younger readers, familiarize yourself with reading levels, which are often printed on children’s books.
Explore these apps to find the reading level for a range of books.

Lastly, the medium matters. A 2018 study found that overall reading comprehension was higher when people read printed text compared to text on a screen. If you are struggling with something you’re reading in a digital format, consider printing it out or buying a hard copy.

Active Reading Techniques

Now that we understand the fundamentals of reading and how to choose the right material, it is time to explore more advanced techniques to boost your reading comprehension.

Experts advocate for what is called “active reading” to fully grasp what is read. This kind of reading is contrasted with more passive styles of reading, like skimming or sitting in a comfy chair with a novel and daydreaming.

Annotation Strategies

Annotation is one of the oldest forms of active reading, dating back to when people copied manuscripts by hand. It involves systematically marking up a text with notes, questions, and comments, rather than taking notes in a separate notebook.

What makes annotation an active reading strategy? It helps readers:

Pay attention to the structure of a text
Transform reading into a dynamic conversation
Understand the key concepts in a text
Ask questions about the text
Organize thoughts and reactions

All of these features make annotation a prime strategy for close reading. Close reading can be particularly important in academic contexts where you might have to write a paper or prepare a presentation based on what you read.

Annotation can include underlining important passages, writing in the margins, and highlighting key points. Here are some common annotation practices:

Rephrase and summarize what you read
Use shorthand for common words and phrases
Don’t be so brief that you can’t decipher your notes later
Circle, highlight, or underline the most important words or phrases
Don’t highlight whole pages
Use different colors of ink for different types of comments, like red for key points and green for questions

Annotating may look and feel very different depending on whether you’re taking notes by hand or digitally. This website weighs the pros and cons of handwritten vs. digital notes.

As mentioned above, the kinesthetics of printed material have been found to increase comprehension, and thereby retention. This makes taking notes by hand the best method for remembering the material you’ve read.

That said, there are advantages to digital notes, such as being able to organize, archive, copy, access, and search them more easily. We’ll go over some digital annotation tools a little later.

Improving Concentration and Focus

Regardless of the active reading strategy you adopt, being alert and intent on what you’re reading will help you stay focused and boost your comprehension. Keep the following things in mind as you sit down to critically engage with a text.

Meet Basic Needs

Sometimes we get distracted when we’re hungry or tired. A brain that is lacking nourishment and sleep is not a brain that is primed to engage with and retain challenging material. Dehydration is another sneaky distractor, so make sure you have water or another beverage of choice nearby.

You might also benefit from a little caffeine boost. A study found that people who consumed 200 mg of caffeine before reading showed improvements in their reading abilities and processing.

Optimize your Reading Environment

Your reading environment plays a crucial role in concentration and focus. You want to have enough light, be comfortable, and minimize distractions.

Having one spot, or several, in your home, local library, or neighborhood café for focused reading can help you stay concentrated. Here is a comprehensive guide to finding or making your ideal reading space.

Mindfulness Techniques

Along with establishing dedicated spaces for reading, incorporating mindfulness techniques into your reading routine enhances focus and mental clarity. Here are some basic mindfulness exercises you can try:

Mindful breathing: Pay attention to each breath in and out by focusing on your belly, chest, nose, or the point between your eyebrows. You can also count your breaths in a cycle if you find yourself getting distracted.
Concentration: Pick something to concentrate on, like a sensation in the body, an emotion, or even a beautiful tree outside your window, and sit with it for a while.
Progressive Relaxation: This practice of mentally attending to, then relaxing, various parts of the body has several different iterations, including yoga nidra and non-sleep deep relaxation (NSDR). Some people might not consider these mindfulness practices per se, but they do require sustained attention and leave you feeling fresh and focused.

In addition to practicing these techniques to enhance mindfulness, there are also methods of mindful reading that can turn reading itself into a mode of mindfulness.

Get Moving

If you’re feeling a bit restless or tired while reading, it might be time to get up and move around. Go for a walk, complete a weightlifting routine, or follow along with an aerobics video.

The benefits of exercise on cognitive performance and brain health are well-studied. For example, researchers at Dartmouth found that just 12 minutes of exercise boosted the reading comprehension of adolescents.

Listen to Music

Reading and studying while listening to background music is popular for good reason. Music can help us relax and improve our focus by shutting out other distractions. There are countless study playlists focused in different genres, like classical, jazz, lo-fi, and instrumental hip-hop.

Binaural beats are another mode of auditory stimulation that can help you relax. Binaural beats into playing two slightly different frequencies into each ear. Research is beginning to show that specific tones of binaural beats can help improve reading comprehension.

Advanced Comprehension Strategies

As you deepen your comprehension and move beyond a surface-level understanding of a text, you’ll want to employ more advanced reading methods. At this stage, you will most likely be doing something with what you read, such as writing a report, literature review, or research paper.

Critical Reading

Critical reading consists of analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing the information that you read. By embracing a critical mindset, you can elevate your comprehension to a level where you engage with texts thoughtfully and analytically. Many university resource centers have guides for critical reading, like this one.

Critical reading also looks different for various disciplines. What you’ll need to pay attention to, methods of note-taking, and the questions you’ll ask will vary if you’re reading material from within the natural sciences, social sciences, or humanities.

Literature from multiple disciplines includes forms of evidence-based argumentation. Understanding the technique of philosophical reading can help you extract the core argument of what you’re reading, regardless of the discipline.

Metacognition

Metacognition entails understanding your own thinking processes. “Meta” means “beyond”, so in metacognition, we are taking a step back to think about how we think, rather than just thinking directly about the content.

As we improve our reading comprehension, we become more involved in what we read. Our memories, background knowledge, and texts we’ve previously read all shape how we approach the text in front of us. This forms our personal context, and experts are able to organize this context and apply it to new materials

When reading with metacognitive strategies, we are aware of our motivations, our limitations, and what questions we need to ask.

Once we start reading with metacognition, we have reached the pinnacle of the journey. However, it might be better to think of it as a horizon, always extending before us and encouraging us to read with more awareness and understanding.

Leverage Technology

Even though print media might have a slight advantage when it comes to understanding and retaining what we read, that doesn’t mean we should ignore the great wealth of digital resources available.

Online Reading Comprehension Platforms

As you can imagine, the internet is filled with countless educator blogs and guided reading websites. Specialized online platforms follow consistent pedagogical methods and are designed to improve reading proficiency.

Resilient Educator has an excellent list of websites dedicated to teaching reading for K-12 learners as well as ESL students of any age. Many of the websites offer quizlets and other ways to track your progress.

Paid platforms are also available with more personalized and interactive offerings. They tend to be popular with homeschoolers. Here is a list of both free and paid online reading comprehension platforms.

Digital Annotation Tools

Digital annotation tools allow you to bring the power of in-text notes to digital formats. In addition to producing notes and highlights that are much easier to store, organize, and search than hand-written notes, these digital tools also open up new possibilities for collaborative reading and text-based work.

Every year, new digital annotation tools and platforms emerge, so it’s hard to provide a comprehensive list. Common Sense Education has a simple list of some of the top annotation tools, with a focus on K-12 readers. For university students and adults in work settings, these collaborative tools are also worth exploring.

Embrace Lifelong Learning

Continuing to read into adulthood has been shown to help protect against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Even if it has been years since you picked up a book for fun, there are plenty of ways to stay engaged and find new reading communities.

Try Reading Challenges

Transform reading into a dynamic and goal-oriented activity by participating in challenges. Online reading networks like Goodreads provide challenges that motivate you to set and achieve reading goals.

Sometimes we get in the habit of just reading one author or staying within a favorite genre. Reading challenges improve your comprehension while diversifying what you read.

Join a Book Club

Book clubs are another great way to broaden your reading choices. They bring us into a communal exploration of literature where we can deepen our own analyses of books and learn from other people’s perspectives.

As we mentioned above, discussing books is a great way to deepen comprehension. If you are having trouble finding book clubs near you, there are plenty of online options, like Book Riot.

Learn From the Experts

The following are some of the biggest names in reading comprehension, literary education, and reading instruction. In addition to published books, many of them have personal websites and YouTube channels which feature their lectures.

P. David Pearson has contributed extensively to research on reading comprehension, literacy development, and educational assessment.
Anne E. Cunningham is a prominent researcher in the areas of reading comprehension, literacy, and cognitive development. Her work often focuses on the intersection of cognitive psychology and education.
Margaret G. McKeown is recognized for her research in vocabulary development, reading comprehension, and literacy instruction. Her work often emphasizes the importance of building students' academic vocabulary.
Richard L. Allington has conducted extensive research on reading comprehension, reading difficulties, and effective literacy instruction in schools.
Susan Neuman is known for her research on early literacy development, reading comprehension, and educational policy. Her work often addresses issues related to literacy in low-income communities.
Elfrieda H. Hiebert is a researcher and educator specializing in literacy development, particularly in the areas of vocabulary, text complexity, and reading comprehension.
Timothy Shanahan has contributed significantly to literacy research, with a focus on reading comprehension, literacy instruction, and educational policy. He has also served in various advisory roles related to literacy education.

Resources for Different Reading Comprehension Levels

Elementary School

Reading Rockets is a robust and helpful resource for basic reading and writing techniques. The website mainly caters to young readers and educators, though there are also ESL resources available.
K5 Learning is easy to navigate and has a great collection of worksheets.
Oxford Owl has a large collection of free e-books for readers up to age 11.

Middle and High School

Adlit focuses on adolescent readers and the unique challenges they face as they start reading more complex material.
Understood offers teen-specific guides and resources. They specialize in advocating for people who learn differently.

College

Some universities have resource centers to help students with reading comprehension and writing. Two comprehensive online options are Dartmouth’s Academic Skills Center and Ramapo College’s Reading Resources.

ESL learners

When mastering reading comprehension in a second or third language, it’s important to be sure that you have a solid foundation in your native language.

The British Council has a sleek and well-structured selection of activities and readings for English learning levels A1 to C1.
Wiregrass has a wide collection of online ESL resources.

Conclusion

Reading is a skill we use every day, so some may take it for granted. However, reading is a powerful tool to participate in the world. No matter your reading level, the resources outlined above will help you chart a path forward to increased reading comprehension. Transform reading into a fulfilling and intellectually enriching experience by employing active reading techniques, finding the right online tools, or joining a vibrant reading community. These proven techniques will empower you to read with confidence and insight, unlocking the potential of the written word.