Charles Town, West Virginia
Foundations of College 100
Shechema Dunham
Professor Danna Meyers
December 30, 2012
Reading Comprehension
Reading is an essential element in every aspect of life. Therefore, understanding what is read is very important. Reading is a multifaceted process involving word recognition, comprehension, fluency, and motivation (Leipzig, 2001). Although many people view reading comprehension in different ways the primary goal of reading comprehension is to understand what the reader has read. In order to comprehend what have been read the reader must first recognize the words and be able to identify key words in a sentence. In order to have good reading comprehension skills one must develop good vocabulary, word recognition, and fluency. These components may assist readers in drawing conclusions and using key words to understand what they have read. It enables students of a higher learning to open the window to the outside world as readers with strengthened reading skills will be able to progress and attain greater development in all academic areas (Abdulah, 2012). To begin with, students have better reading comprehension skills when they have a strong vocabulary. Sometimes it helps readers to understand what the text is trying to say by understanding the words that are on the page. For instance, if a child read a sentence with words in it that they are familiar with they may be able to understand from that one word what the sentence is about. Also, by using words that they know can help them to create meanings to words that they are not familiar with. Vocabulary words are commonly taught from kindergarten throughout the elementary school years. Secondly, children need to learn word recognition, because this too plays a valuable part in the reading comprehension process. Before being able to fully understand words students should be aware of phonemic
References: Abdulah, S. (2012). Reading for pleasure as a means of improving reading comprehension skills. Asian Social Science, 233-238. Hale, A. N. (2009). The validity of reading comprehension rate: reading speed, comprehension, and comprehension rates. Psychology in the Schools, 1036- 1047. Leipzig, D. (2001). What is Reading? Reading Rockets, 1-3.