STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS

Аннотация

This article explores effective strategies to enhance reading comprehension skills in students across various age groups. By integrating active reading techniques, scaffolding, and technology-based resources, educators can empower learners to become proficient readers who can think critically and communicate effectively. Keywords: reading, reading comprehension, language skills, texts, readers. Reading is considered more important than the other 3 language skills as it helps to build vocabulary and grammar which is crucial for listening, writing and speaking. Having good reading improves language comprehension as well. Reading has a lot of benefits. Sh. R. Ikramova(2023) states that it develops your communication skills and expands your knowledge and concepts around you. Reading provides readers with a lot of insight and knowledge. Reading provides access to a great amount of information in textbooks, research papers and online articles which are not available through listening or speaking. A person can get much useful information on any subject through reading. Idayanti (2021) stated that reading is a fundamental way to gain new knowledge and has an impact on students who have more or less understanding of reading. Not only can reading help to improve students’ understanding but it can also help enrich their vocabulary. During the process of reading, a person acquires and interprets information from a written text. All in all, reading is a process of getting information and comprehending it. Reading comprehension is the ability to understand the written texts. It plays a crucial role in a student’s academic success. Having good reading comprehension has a lot of advantages. People whose understanding is good can perform better in their academic career. Good reading comprehension can also arise people’s interest in discovering new subjects which results in broadening their horizons. Elizabeth Escar (2022) also stated that, “Reading comprehension is the foundation for all the academic skills. It helps children build vocabulary, learn about the world, and understand complex concepts. Adults who improve their reading comprehension skills understand work instructions better. They are more productive at work, communicate effectively, and lead a quality life”. There are a lot of factors which lead to poor reading comprehension. One of them is related to translating the texts. While reading, a reader should find a contextual meaning of a word in the passage. Obviously, it is a time-consuming activity, so most people fail to translate passages properly. But it is very necessary, because if the words are not translated well, the passage cannot be understood well. The second factor which results in poor reading comprehension is lack of background knowledge. Readers often fail to connect the content of a text with prior knowledge, which is essential for understanding the context and drawing conclusions. The third factor that influenced students’ difficulty in reading comprehension is the use of poor reading strategies. Most students cannot understand the text or cannot find the main idea of the passages owing to 14 not having proper instructions. If students do not implement some strategies such as predicting, questioning, visualizing and summarizing, they may not tackle challenging texts while reading. There are many strategies which can help to improve reading comprehension. Predicting is one of the strategies which can enhance reading comprehension. Research has shown that good readers use their experiences and knowledge to make predictions and formulate ideas as they read (Block, Israel 2005). This activation of prior knowledge help to make correlations while reading and it helps to develop understanding and critical thinking. It allows students to use information from the text, such as titles, headings, pictures, and diagrams to anticipate what will happen in the story (Bailey, 2015). This method helps students to think before finishing the text and to actively engage in the text. Visualizing the passage can also be one of the ways of improving reading comprehension. Visualizing requires a reader to form an image of the given information with the help of charts, diagrams, and some other drawings. Hobbs (2001) stated that “to enter actively into the reading process, readers must be able to visualize, making the leap to transform printed symbols to actions, events, and ideas that are clearly visible in the mind’s eye”. Visualizing makes the passages more memorable as a result of which memory retention can be enhanced. Self-questioning can come in handy in improving comprehension. According to Gilakjani, Sabouri (2026), the questioning strategy is a reading comprehension strategy that aids readers to figure out the information, distinguishing the main ideas in the text, and make a conclusion based on information from the text. Murni (2013) stated that it can improve students’ awareness and control of their thinking.