Your Guide To Acing Reading Comprehension

What is Reading comprehension?
You have to answer the questions following the passage within a given time. Reading comprehension tests your ability to understand standard written English, analyses complex ideas, and ability to draw inferences from the written material. 

Almost half the questions in the Verbal Section are based on Reading Comprehension (RC in short)!
So, you see  RC is the most important and wide question type of the English section of all major competitive exams. Reading is important not only for RC, but also for English usage area (especially in the Critical Reasoning or Sentence arrangement questions), and other sections.
Having a good reading habit will make more time available for solving the problem. The more you read, the better your reading speed will become. A good reading speed can also enhance your score in other sections like reasoning or QUANT or general awareness.

Solutions to common problems in Reading Comprehension:

1. Having a short attention span  - Lack of focus and mind wavering
Watch your thoughts as your brain diverts from reading. Bring your brain back again and again for reading (forcefully initially).
After a period of time it will become a habit.

2. Being uninterested in the content of the reading material
Create a reward system as a motivation for reading.

3. Finding the reading material to be too tough & Meeting unfamiliar words
Try to connect the difficult word with overall idea of passage (context). Context clues are words or phrases found near the unfamiliar word that will help you understand it. These clues could be located in the same sentence or in a sentence from the same paragraph. Over a period of time (3-4 months) your understanding of vocabulary will enhance even without using of dictionary

4. Lacking understanding overall structure and organization of passage
Develop your mental organizational skills. 
Passage structure = General words → to specific words→ to more depth.

Try to tabulate or organize or quick imagination (create rough image) of keywords of the passage. Capture general idea of the passage rather specific depths.

5. Lacking linkage between lines & difficulty to recall information
Try to analyse only keywords in direct relationship with the main idea of passage. Discard the junk information like examples, illustrations etc to summarize the passage in your mind. As you read a main keyword in a sentence then try to predict next sentence with the help of this keyword. Your prediction power can immensely help you to remember, recall and understand the passage.

Sentence structure :
>>Subject-verb-object of the verb.
Try to remember only few keywords like verb or adjective in your mind rather full sentence.

Reading for RC

It’s more about comprehension than reading. There are two types of reading—reading with the eyes and reading with the brain. Reading for RC is different from general reading where we read either to get some specific piece of information or we read at ease to relax or unwind ourselves after a long tiring day, and it may just be reading with the eyes …… We read to find out the main idea of the passage and be accurate in answering the question. To be better at reading is to develop the habit of reading books of different genre, and developing a taste for intellectual debate and exploration. Find out the main idea of the articles in the editorial section of the newspapers, so that identifying the main idea comes naturally to a student as it is integral to answering questions in Different completive exams especially inferential ones.

Strategies to become better at RC
1. Increasing your motivation while again and again asking to yourself what is your goal, why are you reading what are its benefits in long term.
2. Decrease distractions when reading  - Avoid external thoughts  - keep away mobiles, TV, friends etc  - Choose peaceful and lonely space to read.
3. Create notes of keywords into your mind by reading loud (only the keywords)Don’t jump to dictionary.
4. Avoid regression. Try to understand the contextual meaning of difficult words.
5. Do critical reading of the passage. Keep questioning attitude in back of your mind. Do reason with each sentence! Keep WHAT-WHY-HOW-WHERE always in back up of your mind.
Try to predict next sentence. Try to bring conclusions/inferences from what you have read.

Tips to increase your readings speed
- Generally we read one to two words at a glance, pause for a fraction of a second and move to the other chunk of words. If we can train our eyes to read more number of words in a glance, our reading speed can be better. With consistent practice,you can read the lines of a newspaper column in a single glance.
- While reading a piece of text, we have tendency to move back, cross check and re-read the things which we have already read. This is known as regression or skips back. Regression is a big time killer. It breaks the flow of thought, and leads to poor concentration, which leads to more regressions, which further lowers down the reading speed. Thus regression makes reading a slow and tiresome process.
You should try to minimize the habit of regression. Pausing once in a while to figure out the contextual meaning of words, however, is not regression.
- The best way to eliminate regression is to move a pen or pencil smoothly under the text and make your eyes follow the text. This is a great way to train oneself to read faster.

How to read a passage in exam?
1. Focus on only keywords - chosen keywords must be such that it reflects the massage of full sentence. (practice it)
2. Make logical linkages between keywords as you read on the passage.
3. Do reason with these keywords in backup of your mind as you read on. (It will help you retain keywords in your memory)
4. Finally you get a mental map of full passage containing keywords only.

Take this sample passage:

As financial markets worldwide tumbled over concerns that Greece would default on its debt to the troika comprising the European Commission, the European
Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the people of Greece were being presented with a Hobson’s choice by its government led by the leftist party , Syriza.
In the midst of intense negotiations with representatives of the troika over rolling over debt payments, the Syriza government sought to extend the deadline for payments

Keywords from the passage.
Tumbled? - Greece default - leftist party - extend the deadline.

Advantages of above approach
As you have mental map (rough idea) of a passage you can easily give answers for following type of questions
-  Give a Suitable title of passage.
-  Main idea discussed by author in the passage
-  Tone/sense of passage
-  Further key words also help you locate the part of passage, in which you will find answers for specific questions.

Recapping the strategy while attempting RC questions:
1. Read passage with above approach (get a complete summary of passage in your mind)
2. Apart from passage reading also focus on keywords while reading a question statement or answer options. It keep your focus intact.
3. Try to eliminate the least possible answers. (as you have a complete sense of passage) .
4. Next if you are not able to answer the question directly - refer back to passage - try to locate answers in the passage
5. If you find answer tick it
6. If you not find - guess the answer only if you already eliminated at least 2 answer options.

Don’t make a blind guess.

Question specific and other small RC strategies:
Title of passage? - read quickly opening & ending sentences of all paragraphs.

Antonyms & synonyms type questions
For answering vocabulary questions of RC, just read at least 2 sentences before and after the word and without looking over at the options, think about the context that word is used in. Then check the options
If a question asks about a particular line then read at least 2 sentences before and after the line in question.

This will help you understand the idea of where the point started and where the author is going with it.