Important Rules: Reading Comprehension | SSC CGL Tier 2 - Study Material, Online Tests, Previous Year PDF Download

Here are five essential skills needed for reading comprehension, and tips on what can help kids improve this skill.

Decoding the Reading Comprehension

Deciphering plays a crucial role in the process of reading, drawing upon an essential early language ability known as phonemic awareness, which is a component of the broader skill set termed phonological awareness. Furthermore, decoding involves establishing connections between individual sounds and corresponding letters.

Fluency in Reading Comprehension

Fluency speeds up the rate at which they can read and understand the text.

• Pronouncing or decoding each word can be a laborious process. Word recognition refers to the capacity to instantly identify complete words visually, without the need to sound them out.
• When children can read swiftly and with minimal errors, they achieve "fluency" in reading.
• Fluent readers read with ease at a suitable pace, and reading fluency is a critical factor in achieving strong reading comprehension.

Vocabulary

Comprehending the content requires a grasp of the majority of words within the text. Possessing a robust vocabulary is a crucial element of achieving reading comprehension. Typically, students acquire the meanings of words through daily experiences and reading.

Sentence Construction and Cohesion

The majority of readers connect what they read with their existing knowledge. Therefore, children must possess background information or prior understanding of the world when engaging in reading. Additionally, they should be capable of discerning implicit meanings and extracting significance even when it is not explicitly stated. 
Example: A child is reading a story about a poor family in the 1930s. Knowing the Great Depression can provide insight into what’s happening in the story.

Reasoning and Conclusion

The ability to analyze a given text, reason through its content, and derive conclusions from the presented facts is crucial in addressing reading comprehension questions, especially in passages that rely on inference. This skill involves grasping the underlying meaning and concept.

Working Memory and Attention

As children engage in reading, their focus enables them to absorb information from the text. Simultaneously, their working memory enables them to retain and utilize this information to derive meaning and construct knowledge from the material they are reading.

Examples:

Passage: 1

Read the comprehension below and answer the following questions.

Philosophy of Education is a label applied to the study of the purpose, process, nature, and ideals of education. It can be considered a branch of both philosophy and education. Education can be defined as the teaching and learning of specific skills, and the imparting of knowledge, judgment, and wisdom, and is something broader than the societal institution of education we often speak of.

Many educationalists consider it a weak and woolly field, too far removed from the practical applications of the real world to be useful. But philosophers dating back to Plato and the Ancient Greeks have given the area much thought and emphasis, and there is little doubt that their work has helped shape the practice of education over the millennia.

Plato is the earliest important educational thinker, and education is an essential element in “The Republic” (his most important work on philosophy and political theory, written around 360 B.C.). In it, he advocates some rather extreme methods: removing children from their mothers’ care and raising them as wards of the state, and differentiating children suitable to the various castes, the highest receiving the most education, so that they could act as guardians of the city and care for the less able. He believed that education should be holistic, including facts, skills, physical discipline, music, and art. Plato believed that talent and intelligence are not distributed genetically and thus is be found in children born to all classes, although his proposed system of selective public education for an educated minority of the population does not really follow a democratic model.

Aristotle considered human nature, habit, and reason to be equally important forces to be cultivated in education, the ultimate aim of which should be to produce good and virtuous citizens. He proposed that teachers lead their students systematically, and that repetition be used as a key tool to develop good habits, unlike Socrates’ emphasis on questioning his listeners to bring out their own ideas. He emphasized the balancing of the theoretical and practical aspects of subjects taught, among which he explicitly mentions reading, writing, mathematics, music, physical education, literature, history, and a wide range of sciences, as well as play, which he also considered important.

During the Medieval period, the idea of Perennialism was first formulated by St. Thomas Aquinas in his work “De Magistro”. Perennialism holds that one should teach those things deemed to be of everlasting importance to all people everywhere, namely principles and reasoning, not just facts (which are apt to change over time), and that one should teach first about people, not machines or techniques. It was originally religious in nature, and it was only much later that a theory of secular perennialism developed.

During the Renaissance, the French skeptic Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 1592) was one of the first to critically look at education. Unusually for his time, Montaigne was willing to question the conventional wisdom of the period, calling into question the whole edifice of the educational system, and the implicit assumption that university-educated philosophers were necessarily wiser than uneducated farmworkers, for example.

Q1: What is the difference between the approaches of Socrates and Aristotle?
(a) Aristotle felt the need for repetition to develop good habits in students; Socrates felt that students need to be constantly questioned.
(b) Aristotle felt the need for rote-learning; Socrates emphasized dialogic learning.
(c) There was no difference.
(d) Aristotle emphasized the importance of paying attention to human nature; Socrates emphasized science.
Ans: (a)
Their approaches were different, and this difference is explained in the fourth paragraph.

Q2: Why do educationists consider philosophy a ‘weak and woolly’ field?
(a) It is not practically applicable.
(b) Its theoretical concepts are easily understood.
(c) It is irrelevant for education.
(d) None of the above.
Ans: (a)
Educationists believe that philosophical abstractions are not suitable for practical application.

Q3: What do you understand by the term ‘Perennialism’, in the context of the given comprehension passage?
(a) It refers to something which is of ceaseless importance. 
(b) It refers to something which is quite unnecessary.
(c) It refers to something which is abstract and theoretical.
(d) It refers to something which existed in the past and no longer exists now.
Ans: (a)
The term comes from the root word ‘perennial,’ meaning ceaseless.

Q4: Were Plato’s beliefs about education democratic?
(a) He believed that only the rich have the right to acquire education.
(b) Yes.
(c) He believed that only a select few are meant to attend schools.
(d) He believed that all pupils are not talented.
Ans: (b)
Plato’s beliefs were democratic, but not his suggested practices.
Q5: Why did Aquinas propose a model of education that did not lay much emphasis on facts?
(a) Facts are not important.
(b) Facts do not lead to holistic education.
(c) Facts change with the changing times.
(d) Facts are frozen in time.
Ans: (c)
Facts are not of the utmost importance when aiming for holistic education as they change with the times.