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Reading Comprehension Skills Quiz
Extension of Question #3: Ultimately we read for comprehension. The following list are reading comprehension skills (what we do to understand
text) from “More Reading Power”, Beatrice S. Mikulekcy and Linda Jeffries, Longman 1996.
Match the following reading comprehension skill with its definition. Write the number next to the matching definition.
1.
Previewing
and Prediction
2.
Vocabulary Knowledge
______ We all want to be able to read more in less time and improve comprehension. When you read slowly, you read
one word at a time. The words become separate pieces of information that you must remember. By the time you get to
the end of a sentence you may have forgotten the beginning. When you read faster you understand better because you
focus on ideas by reading groups of words that are connected.
______ Retelling the important parts of a passage in a much shorter way by including main ideas and major supporting
points.
3.
Topics of the Text
4.
Topics of Paragraphs
______ A pattern makes it easier for your brain to understand and remember information. Finding the pattern of a writer
helps you find the main idea and improves comprehension while reading (e.g. listing – main idea followed by supporting
details, sequencing or chronological ordering, comparing and contrasting, cause and effect, story telling)
5.
Patterns of Organization
______ Sometimes the topic may not be stated anywhere directly. You must look for clues to figure out what the text is
about. This also means being able to draw conclusions and make assumptions from given information.
6.
Making Inferences
7.
Summarizing
______ Looking for the main idea helps you connect what you read to what you already know, e.g. what is this about?
What is the general idea?
8.
Thinking Skills
______ Pre-teaching vocabulary; using context clues such as grammatical structure and position, surrounding text, and
connecting and summary words to guess the meaning.
9.
Reading Faster
______ It’s important to recognize the main idea of a group of sentences. This will help you focus on general vs. specific
information.
10. Recognize Writing Styles
______ If you want to read well in English, you must think in English as you read. If you think in another language and
translate form the English, you will always have difficulty with comprehension. Understanding the words and the grammar
is not enough. You need to be able to follow the ideas in English.
______ Recognizing whether the writing is one of the following: humor vs. serious, editorial, comic, news story, drama,
biography, novel, short story, poetry, etc.
______ Gathering information about a book by examining its cover in order to make some ‘educated guesses’ about
what is in the text’. This helps you get some ideas about what you will read, begin processing the information far more
quickly, follow the writer’s idea better and save time.
© Bridge Linguatec, Inc. d/b/a Bridge
BridgeTEFL Input – Receptive Skills II: Teaching Reading
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