It is one of the main components you will inevitably encounter during high school English, and the only component that doesn’t involve writing. Reading comprehension tests seem to be one of those assessments that leave you either glowing with the knowledge of your adept literature analysis skills, or despondently mourning your GPA.

Despite the common belief that reading comprehension is an inherited trait however, there are ways you can improve your score. As someone who now scores consistently high, I  vehemently encourage you to continue reading this article if you are struggling in English. Try something new and watch as your scores skyrocket.

1. Improve your vocabulary.

If my use of longer and more complex vocabulary in the introduction was insufficient for you to infer that I am actively trying to employ foreign words more often as well, return to the beginning and read the passage once more.

One of the most significant (and simple) ways to increase your reading comprehension score is to expand your vocabulary. But how do we do that?

a) Merriam Webster’s Word of the Day

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Learn a new word every day and assiduously integrate it into your speech, your texts, and your emails. Aim to use the word at least 7 times to have a higher chance of remembering it.

Here’s the link: https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day 

You can even sign up for their newsletter to get the word of the day delivered to your email inbox every day. It’s a perfect bite-sized amount of learning and does wonders if you manage to stay consistent.

b) Flashcards

I like to use spaced repetition software, like Anki, but you do whatever works best for you. The goal of using flashcards is to get a sense of how well you can actively recall the words. Make sure you understand them and you aren’t just memorizing meaningless baloney.

c) Read more classical literature.

Reading classical literature can be thrilling when you do so intentionally. It is less enjoyable when you read it in class and are forced to perform the desolate task of deconstructing each and every sentence, but for your own enjoyment it is a highly efficient way to naturally expand your vocabulary comprehension. Err on the side of caution when choosing books though; it is very important that you balance having a plot that you enjoy and a decent level of vocab complexity. Too complex and you won’t finish, but a fast-paced teen romance is not going to advance your vocabulary at all.

Some suggestions that helped me develop my vocabulary a lot:

• Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy M. Montgomery
• The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkein
• Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain

Classical literature does a wonderful job of effectively keeping you engaged while bamboozling you just enough with its complex language. Reading these books will build  stronger vocab inferencing skills. This helps immensely when you don’t know what the word on the test actually means, because chances are you’ll be able to make better guesses.

2. Mark up your test.

Also an extremely helpful way to guide yourself through dense reading passages during a novel study.

a) Summarize. Summarize. Summarize.

I’ve been doing a miserable job of staying concise since I’m simultaneously attempting to achieve another goal that I’ll explain later, but as you read through a passage you should attempt to summarize it in chunks. This will help you when you need to go back and answer questions about the piece.

Summarize in your own words. Summarize chunks like passages of parallelism, paragraphs, and stanzas. It will make a world of a difference when you analyze later, because you won’t need context for a specific line anymore.

b) POE

The famous “Process Of Elimination”… but more literal. Here are some tips to make your POE a little bit more effective:

• When you read an obviously incorrect answer, strike it all the way through instead of just crossing out the letter.
• Identify your wrong answers:
  • “Half right” (HR) – only one portion of the response is accurate to the question
  • “Too specific” (TS) – mentions an irrelevant idea or topic that is not mentioned in the text or in the question
  • “Too general” (TG) – an answer that makes a general statement that neglects to fully respond the the question
  • “Similar wording” (SW) – an answer that is incorrect but contains a lot of the same words as the question

For example:

Which of the following states the main idea of the article about high school English that you are reading?

a) To express the author’s opinion about the high school English

b) To teach monkeys how to tie their shoelaces

c) To inform the audience about reading comprehension test tips

d) To offer reading comprehension advice to students in Grade 10

The correct answer is clear, if we mark up the page a bit:

Which of the following states the main idea of the article about high school English that you are reading?

a) To express the author’s opinion about the high school English SW, TG

b) To teach monkeys how to tie their shoelaces

c) To inform the audience about reading comprehension test tips

d) To offer reading comprehension advice HR to students in Grade 10 TS

(C) is the correct answer.

3. Write effectively

Now that you’ve learned all this vocabulary in Step 1, it is time to put it into actual use. This is actually one of the reasons I blog. While most of the time, my language is quite plain, blogging provides a plethora of opportunity for me to not only encounter and consume a wider range of words, but also to manipulate them in my own writing.

If you’re not a blogger and you don’t want to become one, here are some other ways you can incorporate writing into your life:

• journaling
• texting… but in a sophisticated way
• essay writing
• debate construction
• writing emails… but in a sophisticated way
• sticky notes and reminders… but in a sophisticated way

It is possible to integrate reading comprehension skills into every aspect in life where understanding something is involved. The more you do it, the better you will become. However, it’s important to note that effective use of vocabulary will actually shorten your writing (most of the time) and make it clearer (most of the time). While it’s exhilarating to experiment, if you find yourself rambling for sake of utilizing every new word you can think of, your writing will not help you improve.

All said and done, it is obviously unnecessary to employ your newly learned vocabulary into writing in order to do well in reading comprehension tests – all you really need to do is have an outstandingly confident sense of inferencing and a decent knowledge of literary devices. But writing does help engrave words and establish deeper memories of them.

TL;DR

No! Go back and read the whole thing, don’t just scroll to the end. An important part of reading comprehension tests is to have a decent attention span. You’ll need it when you’re analyzing Shakespeare, so why not develop it by reading my article from start to finish?