What Are The Elements of Comprehension?

The four language skills are; reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Having strong reading skills is crucial to understanding written language. You need it to understand street signs, books, magazines, and writing assignments in school.

From a young age, you practice basic reading skills with building phonemic awareness and fluency. These are what help you actually read words and sentences without stumbling your words. The thing is, it's not enough to just read the words on the page. You have to understand the message behind them.

If reading sounds scary to you, it's likely because you haven't fully developed the skills that make it a doable task. If you can think and solve problems, then you are already halfway there. It's about building on the skills that your brain can already do. Think of comprehension like this. It's simply solving a puzzle using words instead of pieces.

There's quite a lot that goes into understanding pages and pages of written texts. Students usually develop these skills as they advance in school. What are the elements of comprehension that will help you to succeed in school and other areas of life? Let's find out.

What is Reading Comprehension?

In the most simple definition, reading comprehension is understanding what you read. You need strong reading comprehension skills no matter what area in life that you find yourself in. It doesn't just apply to a university student. It applies to anyone who has to read something, which is all of us. Reading comprehension involves three elements: literal, inferential, and evaluative.

Three elements of comprehension

Literal:

We will start with the most basic level of comprehension, which is literal. Take the name of the comprehension level for what it is. It means that you have an understanding of the text from what is on the page. You can use skills such as skimming, keywords, and scanning the text to get a feel for what it will be about.

Inferential:

Next up is inferential comprehension, which means that you need to search for the underlying ideas in the text. These are the ideas that are not explicitly in the text. It is up to you to use prior knowledge of the subject to determine what the text is mostly about. For this element, you can develop inferencing skills by combining ideas and identifying the voice or tone of the author. You should also consider the author's or the characters' points of view in the text.

Evaluative:

The last element of comprehension is what you could call the "bigger picture." It means that you need to relate what you read to the real world and go beyond what it says on paper. You need to critically analyze the text and decide which viewpoint you agree with. Remember, there is no right or wrong answer to this. It's simply taking a side and justifying your answer using reasoning and examples from the text. Most importantly, it is necessary to use prior knowledge of the subjects to differentiate between facts and opinions stated within the text.