Research Based Methods for Improving Reading Comprehension
Many people know how to read, but struggle to understand what they're reading
Hiya!
I recently wrote about critical thinking and the complexities involved in it as one of our more challenging and vital thinking skills. In the same article, I mention the decline of critical thinking within the United States over the last quarter-century, and a few months earlier, I wrote about the decline in reading skills within the US.
Within these two pitfalls is the growing number of people who struggle with reading comprehension — those who can read written words but struggle to grasp their meaning.
I was familiar with this issue since researching it, but then I watched the Netflix show Love is Blind, and something one of the participants said made it feel tangible. A woman asked a guy if he’s a reader, and he replied that he can read, but he struggles to grasp what he’s reading. His response inspired this article because I know he’s not alone, not by a long shot.
The Decline of Reading Comprehension
The only common yardstick for measuring students' performance in the United States is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation's Report Card. This congressionally mandated program is overseen by a Governing Board and administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
And by the looks of things, we’re not doing great.
The NAEP’s 2024 report card showed that the average reading scores for 4th- and 8th-grade students have fallen by 5 points in 5 years. There was a 3-point drop between 2019 and 2022, followed by another 2-point drop between 2022 and 2024.
The report card also revealed that around 40 percent of fourth graders are below the NAEP’s Basic Level in reading, the highest percentage since 2002.
This means these fourth graders struggle to recognize things like what a character may be feeling at a moment in a story (41 percent), identify the reason behind a character’s behavior (39 percent), or recognize what’s happening in a highlighted paragraph of a story (39 percent).
Unfortunately, students aren’t doing much better by eighth grade. About a third of eighth graders in the United States also failed NAEP’s basic reading benchmarks — the largest percentage ever.
In a news release by the National Assessment Governing Board, board member Patrick Kelly said:
"Student academic achievement is the cornerstone of national success and security. This makes a lack of academic progress today a direct and urgent threat to our collective future. The continued declines in reading scores are particularly troubling. Reading is foundational to all subjects, and failure to read well keeps students from accessing information and building knowledge across content areas."
It’s not just students, either.
Adults throughout the United States also struggle with reading comprehension. A 2022 Gallup analysis found that over half (54 percent) of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.
This means people of all ages in the United States have trouble reading. While this issue should have been addressed decades ago, it’s quickly snowballing into a massive problem that will impact everyone. Some are calling it an epidemic.
Thankfully, now that the problem has been (repeatedly) identified, some researchers are focusing on finding solutions.
Improving Reading Comprehension
In 2020, Choosri Banditvilai, an assistant professor at Kasetsart University, a public research university in Bangkok, Thailand, published a study in the International Journal of Social Science and Humanity investigating the effectiveness of reading strategies on reading comprehension.
The study involved 59 second-year English university students (13 males and 46 females between 18 and 20 years old) whose feedback supports the idea that learning occurs when we use our existing knowledge to understand new information. The study also outlined four habits to help us comprehend what we read.
A. Skimming
If social media scrolling has taught us one thing, it’s how to skim content. Skimming is a speed reading technique that helps us gain an overview of information and its main ideas by reading it quickly and skipping the details.
For instance, reading the first sentence of a paragraph, which typically states the paragraph’s main point, while skipping the following sentences, which lay out the point’s details. Although sometimes, the details are laid out first, with the main point being the last sentence in a paragraph.
B. Scanning
Similar to skimming, scanning is a method that allows a reader to spot specific information quickly. Banditvilai writes in his study:
“Scanning is especially important for improving your reading. Many students try to read every word when they read, so they read very slowly. Scanning can help students learn to read and understand faster.”
The point of this method is to scan texts for information when you already know what you’re looking for, such as a date or specific words, so we don’t waste time reading every word on a page before finding what we’re looking for.
C. Making Predictions
Thanks to our pattern recognition skills, making predictions is one of our more exquisite talents as a species. We predict things all the time, and we should do it while reading, too.
Banditvilai refers to Thomas Hutchinson and Alan Water’s definition of prediction in their 1987 book English for Specific Purposes. According to them, prediction is a “matter of using an existing knowledge of a pattern or system in order to anticipate what is likely in a novel situation.”
Previous researchers found that people who are good at reading use their experiences and existing knowledge to make predictions and develop ideas as they read. Such as using their real-life experiences to predict what a character may do next in a story — or what events might arise in a story based on the choices a character makes.
Part of the reason this is so effective is because predicting what will happen next in a story makes reading a more interactive rather than passive experience.
Successful readers can predict what characters in a story will do next or what events will result from their actions—even if they’re wrong. They can also see behind the veil, meaning they can work out what an author or writer is saying or understand a deeper message behind the words on the page.
Predicting is a continual aspect of reading, and our predictions change or strengthen based on the information we uncover.
In the study, students specifically mentioned in questionnaires that using prediction skills while reading provided them with a purpose for reading by helping them pay closer attention to the text to determine whether their predictions were correct.
D. Questioning
The students were given pre-reading questions to encourage them to think about and relate their relevant background to texts they were instructed to read, preview essential points, and set a purpose for reading. The point of the questions, Banditvilai writes in his paper, is to require,
“readers to ask questions of themselves to construct meaning, enhance understanding, find answers, solve problems, find information, and discover new information.”
Banditvilai found that providing questions beforehand helped the students stay engaged and interested in the activity and comprehend what they read.
He writes that asking questions during the reading process encourages students to think about what they’re reading and become active and independent readers who can appropriately reflect on it.
Perspective Shift
As a writer, my livelihood depends on people's ability to read and comprehend my work. However, comprehending what we read is essential for learning and strengthening our critical thinking skills, which are invaluable tools we can use to improve and change our lives.
As we rush to invent technology to make our lives easier, more streamlined, and efficient, we’re losing some of our fundamental skills. Reading is more than just knowing how to translate squiggly lines on a page into words, it’s also understanding the meaning behind the words, sentences, and paragraphs.
Reading allows us to learn and understand new ideas and inspires our imaginations. It also makes us more intelligent, improves our memory, concentration and stress; strengthens our social skills, expands our thinking, protects our brains, helps us live longer, and connects us to each other through time and space. Reading can even influence our personality and change the course of our lives.
Books and the ability to read and comprehend the ideas within them are powerful. It’s not an accident that books are among the first things attacked when society shifts toward authoritarianism. Reading is a monumentally influential and effective skill that everyone should have the privilege of knowing.
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Thank you for sharing this information.
Sadly, it's one more article to illustrate that the US is an Idiocracy; not becoming, but is.
Anyone, no matter how poor their education or how faulty the teaching they received--if they can read words--can improve their reading comprehension by reading.
It requires tolerating the learning curve, meaning that things will be difficult for a while. The reward, in the beginning, is the pride of knowing one is sticking to it, and later, that one is growing and expanding as a human being.
What? I couldn’t follow. 😉