Reading with Difficulty, Tips for Reading

Newspapers and magazines today cater to a reading age of fifteen or sixteen years old. That’s because most people don’t have great reading skills. This is partially due to an education system that hasn’t focused on improving reading skills, and partially because students have been diverted by more visually easy-to-comprehend media. However, without solid reading skills, there’s frequent misunderstanding, jobs can be lost, and bad decisions are made. In order to improve difficulty with reading, here are some tips for reading that will improve your reading comprehension. Reading comprehension also affects verbal comprehension. When your reading comprehension is good, there is less risk of misunderstanding people. It all goes back to understanding words and understanding grammar.

Improve Your Vocabulary
In the old days, people did not abuse vocabulary, and if they did, it wasn’t publicized. Here’s an example of how public figures abuse vocabulary. Both Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney used the word ‘misspoke’ to explain away something stupid or a straight lie. That is not what the word ‘misspoke’ means. Mispoke means to mispronounce a word. The bottom line is that people learn new words by hearing other people use them and by taking the meaning of the word from the sense of the sentence. Both Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney are horribly guilty of misleading those who had never heard the word before. Advertising agencies also do this in order to gain business. Business leaders do it in order to mislead people.

Actively Learning from a Dictionary Improves Reading Comprehension
In days gone by, we were taught that every time we heard a new word to grab a dictionary and look up the meaning. That way, over a period of time, we learnt new words. By understanding the meaning of these words, we were not mislead or misinformed when other people either purposely or mistakenly used these words.

Another way of improving reading comprehension is to actively learn five words from a dictionary every day and use them in sentences during the day. Within a year, one’s reading comprehension should be remarkably improved.

Tips for Reading: Punctuation Affects and Determines Meaning
“Come Eat, Grandma.”

“Come eat Grandma.”

The first sentence means that someone is telling grandma that she must come eat food. The second sentence is speaking to other people to tell them that grandma is to be served as 'roast grandma' on the menu. The only way to determine the difference in the sentence is by understanding the meaning of the comma.

There are many easy grammar books available to teach grammar. Buy one and do an exercise each week. Again, within a year, you will find that your reading comprehension improves remarkably.

Difficulty with Reading
One other reason exists for difficulty with reading and that is dyslexia. I’m not quite sure why but these tips work for dyslexia as well. My daughter had dyslexia (officially diagnosed) and at ten years old couldn’t read. I decided to take an interest as reading is probably the most vital tool for surviving and success in today’s world. It also brings a lot of pleasure. So I read her an exciting story and stopped midway. I did that every night for three nights. The forth night when she came to me to ask me to read the rest of the story, I declined because I was busy. She grabbed the book and started reading. Sixteen years later, she is an avid reader and a very good writer. If you have difficulty with reading, you can overcome it by learning vocabulary, grammar, and practicing every day.

Tips for Reading: Practice Reading Different Reading Levels
Reading at grade one level is different to reading at grade four level, and reading at high school level is different to reading university level. Firstly, find out which level you read at most fluently. Start there. First practice reading at the level you are comfortable with until it becomes so easy that you are ready to move on to the next level. Generally, it takes about three to six months of reading daily to go up one or two levels. Essentially, if you’ve been reading on a daily basis for two years, have done the vocabulary exercises, and gone to grammar classes (or worked through your grammar books), you should be a very, very good reader within a year or two.

Tips for Reading Comprehension
Yes, it does take time to become a good reader. It also takes effort and discipline to become a good reader. And, yes, you’ve probably read these tips for reading elsewhere but didn’t want to do it because you wanted something easier. However, it doesn’t work that way. If you want to improve your reading comprehension, it’s vital to work on grammar and vocabulary, and to read every day.

Good luck with your reading comprehension. You will find that it will affect many areas of your life – including knowing when advertisers, politicians, and business is trying to con you with words!