Boosting your reading comprehension is a major goal of study skills training. It makes sense. You have to read a lot in school. You might as well get the most you can out of it, right?
We’re always looking for tips to help you boost your reading comprehension, so we thought we’d write about one today. It’s a simple study skill, but it’s a good one.
Boost your reading comprehension by mentally summarizing every two pages.
What do we mean by this? Well, if you get to the end of two pages and you can’t tell yourself what in the world you just read, you did not have very good reading comprehension.
What we’re suggesting you do is stop every two pages of textbook reading and try to remember what you read.
A couple of additional thoughts here that you should keep in mind as you try to boost your reading comprehension.
1) Do this quickly, not slowly
If you slow down your reading speed too much, this tip doesn’t help. We don’t like slow reading (especially when it’s reading a textbook). It takes more time. Usually it also lowers your comprehension when you slow down.
Yep, it’s weird; But it’s true. Slower reading often decreases comprehension rather than increases it.
Weird, but true: slower reading often decreases comprehension rather than increases itClick To TweetStop to summarize the pages, but don’t slow down too much.
2) Do it mentally OR physically
If you wanted to write down a summary every two pages, that wouldn’t be bad. You should always have a paper trail pointing back to the fact that you did study. And any note-taking activities are great for helping you boost your reading comprehension.
But if you just want to stop and think out a summary to yourself, that’s good too. The point here is to train yourself to boost your comprehension by paying better attention. Either mental or physical summaries will do the work for you.
3) Do it with textbook reading
This doesn’t work quite as well when you are reading a novel. It works great with reading textbooks. Give it a try and let us know how it goes for you. We’d love to hear your results!
Oh — and you’ll need to try it for a week or so if you want it to work out. It takes a little extra time to get in this habit. It’s not a microwave fix, but it’s a great way to train yourself.
