Comprehension Strategies Coursework - 825 Words

Comprehension Strategies Essay (Coursework Sample) Content: Comprehension Strategies EssayStudent NameInstitution Comprehension Strategies EssayMany students often have a difficult time in the comprehension of narrative, essays, expository and other literature works. Despite the teachers efforts to guide a student through the comprehension process, it is no guarantee that he or she will understand the content of the literature work. This makes it necessary for one to learn and understand various strategies that he or she can use to understand literature works. This paper describes the various strategies that one can use to facilitate comprehension of narratives, expository and poetic texts. The first strategy that facilitates comprehension of an expository text is the use of graphics. This involves the use of graphics organizers, analysis of text structure and organization pattern. The student has to make use of independent writing in the analysis of the text. Expository texts are a challenge to many students because they do n ot read them for fun, but with the intent to derive information from them. This strategy helps them understand the structure of the text. Scholars also refer to the strategy as the evoking images method (Hall-Kenyon Black,2010). Hall-Kenyon and Black (2010) assert that the second strategy that readers can use to comprehend expository essay is the K-W-L chart approach (Knows, wants to know, has learned, which some scholars refer to as the sell questioning strategy. In this approach, the student writes down what he or she already knows about the text, the expected outcome from the text and finally, the lesson from the text. This helps a student find the information from the text structure. The strategy also involves questioning the authors opinions, which helps understand the message the he or she intends to pass across through the text. This also helps the reader analyse, discuss, comment and reflect on the authors message and theme in the text. Narratives are more fun to read than expository texts. Many students get lost in the fun and fail to comprehend the main theme of the narrative text. One of the best strategies that a reader can use to understand the information in a narrative is the visionary technique. In this strategy, the reader visualizes what he or she expects to find in the text, the pre-reading activity. Later the reader analyzes what he or she has just read, the post-reading activity. The pre-reading activity helps the reader formulate a purpose for the reading and helps activate his or her background knowledge. It also helps keep one motivated and attentive throughout the reading. On the other hand, the post reading activities help the reader analyze, synthesize and reflect on the information in the text. Several researchers refer to the method as the activation prior knowledge strategy (Lei, et al. 2010; Fan,2010).To comprehend poetic texts a reader may use the self-questioning, seeking clarifications or the evoking images strategies. In the self-questioning strategy, the reader will ask him or herself what the poem intends to pass across. He or she will also take time to question the thoughts and views of the poet and analyze these opinions. The process helps the reader take a critical approach when reading the poem and understand the information the poet intends to pass (Fan,2010). In the seeking clarifications strategy, the reader lists down main vocabularies in the poem. Poems often make use of vocabularies, with the intent of passing across a different message from the dictionary meaning of the words. Listing down these vocabularies, helps the reader analyze their significance in the text. This is significant in the overall comprehension of the poem (Lei, et al. 2010).The other strategy that a reader may use in the comprehension of poem is the evoking images approach. This approach helps the reader, analyze the text and create mental pictures, which help understand the purpose and message of the text. It is necess ary to incorporate aspects of imagery and mental visualization when reading a poem to understand its application in the real world life experiences (Fan,2010). Other research based strategies that readers use in the comprehension of narratives, expository texts and poems include inferences and summaries (Lei, et al. 2010). In the inferences strategy, the reader refers to the pronouns, new vocabulary, concepts in the text, ideas and elaborations based on the subject of the text. This helps understand, the relevance of the information, and its relation to the subject. One cannot undermine the significance of the inference method in comprehension of literal texts. An essential technique in this strategy, is the question and answer relationship method. In this technique, the ...