UNIT II

Comprehension of Technical Materials/Texts and Information

Design & development
Reading Comprehension
• Richard Steele, “Reading is to mind what exercise is to
body”.
• Comprehending what we read is the most demanding
aspect of our reading.
• Reading comprehension refers to the ability to understand
information presented in written form.
• One’s level of reading comprehension skills will affect even
one’s interpretation of directions, such as ‘what to do and
when to do’ that appear on certain documents.
• One needs to understand the difference between the
factual and inferential comprehension, to know why one is
unable to interpret certain texts.
 Factual and Inferential comprehension
• Factual Questions are asked to check the reader’s
understanding of specific events, ideas, theories,
people etc., in the reading text, whereas inferential
questions are asked to assess whether the reader can
conclude some probable result based on whatever they
have read.
Readers can find the answers to factual questions in
the passage itself, but they have to think beyond the
text to find an answer to an inference question.
• For example : When did the peak of the last ice age
occur? ( Factual question)
Why did the author refer to last ice age? (Inferential
question)
 Reasons for Poor Comprehension

• Inability to understand a word

• Inability to understand a sentence
• Inability to understand how sentences relate to one
another
• Inability to understand how the information fits
together in a meaningful way
• Lack of interest or concentration
• Topic sentence of a paragraph sums up the entire content of the
paragraph and generally appears as the first sentence of the
paragraph. But many a time, it may occur at the end.
Occasionally, you may find the topic sentence somewhere else in
the paragraph. When it occurs in the beginning, you may see that
all other sentences deduce something from this sentence, thereby
proving the validity of the idea.
Hence, a paragraph starting with the topic sentence is said to
follow deductive logic. Conversely, when the paragraph ends with
the topic sentence , you need to induce some supporting details
in order to arrive at the general statement. Such paragraphs are
said to follow an inductive logic.
Remember that the topic sentence gives the main idea while the
elaborating points are supplied by the other sentences of the
paragraph.
 Points to Read Faster
• Try to avoid focussing on every word but rather look at groups
of two to three words
• Work on your vocabulary
• Force yourself to read faster by following the technique of
reading words in groups, so that you can no longer move your
lips.
• Read more.
• Determine your purpose before reading.
• Spend a few minutes a day reading at a faster than
comfortable rate
• If poor concentration when reading, practise reading for only
5-10 minutes at a time and gradually increase this time.
• Do not feel you must read every word.
 Reading and Interpretation
• When reading a passage, if you use literal meaning then you may
not be able to arrive at the correct interpretation. But you need to
place the sentence in context and then try to understand the
meaning.
Authors can present actions whereas as a reader, you need to
interpret the personalities behind those actions, their motives, and
their intentions. As some readers may focus on the concept while
others on the benefits and shortcomings.
Understanding the hidden meaning or intention behind explicitly
stated words is known as reading between the lines. We can read
between the lines not only while listening but also while reading.
To achieve this, we should know how to connect the dots between
what we literally read in the text and what the author implies or
leaves unsaid.
We may need to use some clues given in the text or our prior
knowledge .
 Inferring meanings- Lexical and Contextual
• Enhancing the vocabulary can boost reading speed and comprehension as
you can recognize or guess and infer the meaning of a particular word in a
context. In addition, good vocabulary enables you to detect subtle
differences in sentence meaning that may hold the key to the meaning of
an entire paragraph or a passage.
When you encounter a word you do not know, you tend to skip it if you do
not need the word to make sense of what you are reading. But you
remember something about the word you skip such as where you saw it
and the context in which it appeared. As you encounter a word repeatedly,
more and more information about the word accumulates until you have a
vague notion of what it means. As you get more information, you are able
to define that word.
Reading require you to make inferences that depend on prior knowledge.
Inferring lexical (word) and contextual meanings is the first step towards
understanding a written message. You need to perceive the words and
phrases used and recognize their definitions to follow what you read.
Follow the following tips:
• Remember that words in isolation convey one meaning and interpreted word groups
convey another. so word groups to be perceived as thought units r sense groups.
These units hold together to give special meaning.
• Domain knowledge is necessary to give meaning to otherwise confusing sentences.
• Do not stop reading if you are not able to recall the meaning of a certain word or
phrase. Rather continue, reading till you complete a reasonable portion of the
message.
• Analyse the word structure to guess the meaning of words and identify the context
clues and signal words to understand the meaning of unknown words. Word roots,
prefixes and suffixes give clues to the meaning of unknown words.
• You can also get a clue to the meaning of a word from the context.
• At times, you may infer the meaning of an unknown word through its extended
definition or stated qualities.
• If you come across an antonym of the unknown word, you may be able to guess the
meaning.
• Remembering the words through the appropriate phrases is another excellent way
of getting the meaning though you may not know the meaning of those words in
isolation.
• Even if you guess the meaning through some or the other method, ensure
that you have guessed it right.
 Understanding and interpreting ideas
• Identify the types of passage
• Pay attention to the first one –third of the text that gives you an idea about the
topic and scope, author’s purpose and structure of the passage
• Look for author’s intention-to discuss, to argue, to compare and contrast, to
explain and to persuade
• Find out the author’s tone- opinionated, argumentative, descriptive, factual
• Identify the main and supporting ideas
• Get to the gist of the each paragraph
• Do not get obsessed with too many specific details
• Attack the text, do not just reading
• Think about about what you are reading
• Paraphrase the complicated parts in order to understand them
• Ask yourself questions to understand
• Jot down notes or underline important parts
• Do not let unfamiliar topics puzzle you
• Read for structure; ignore details
 Intensive reading & Extensive reading
• Intensive Reading is reading carried out for a complete
or thorough understanding of the text by focussing on
vocabulary, sentence structure, and also the coherence
among the various parts of the text. It may be called
academic reading.
Extensive Reading is a type of reading that is carried out
for an overall or a general understand of the text
without aiming for 100 percent comprehension.
In other words, when you involved in extensive reading,
you may not focus on vocabulary , syntax etc., it centres
on attempt to differentiate between the core and
supporting ideas.
You normally enjoy rather than comprehend the texts
you use for extensive reading.
• Intensive Reading involves several skills, namely, predicting
the content, understanding the gist, scanning, identifying
the topic sentence and its role in each paragraph of the
text, transferring of information, understanding discourse
coherence, and sequencing of sentences.
Intensive reading can be done through the following:
Be clear with the purpose of your reading
Predict the contents
Scan the text
Use contextual clues to interpret the meaning of unfamiliar
words and word groups
Understand the gist of the text
Identify the topic sentence and its role in each paragraph
Make notes for what you require from what you have read
• Critical Reading : When you read a text specifically with
a view to discover and analyse some information, you
are reading critically.
In other words, you are not just satisfied with receiving
the matter (what) presented in the text but you also
apply your critical faculty of power of judgement to find
out the manner (how) in which what the text describes
happens.
It involves the discovery, analysis, and interpretation of
the text, identifying the style of writing, meaning of
the text, understand the purpose, tone, and style of
the author , creative thinking and critical thinking are
an integral part of critical reading.
It leads you to judging and evaluating the arguments.
 Improving Comprehension Skills
Read a variety of materials. Do not limit yourself to textbooks.
Read a fairly long portion of the material. It would be difficult to
assess reading comprehension based on one or two paragraphs. Try
to read an entire section or chapter instead.
Circle unknown or unfamiliar words as you read. After reading, recall
as much of the information as possible. Jot down points if you like.
Then check the accuracy and completeness of your recollection.
If the main ideas are presented in a particular order, see if you can
recall the structure.
Consider how interesting the subject matter is and how much you
already know about the subject. Answer questions about the material
after reading it.
These will help in: Enhancing the understanding of the content in a
text, improvement understanding of how information is organised,
improve attention and concentration while reading, make reading
more active process, increase personal improvement in the reading
material, to promote critical thinking, enhance the recall of text
information in one’s memory.