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Some of you were or are not in the same condition with your stroke. After I had 2 strokes, I was (and still am) grateful that I could still read. Either way, we know we need to improve our reading comprehension.

Reading comprehension is the ability to understand what you are reading. It means the accurate meaning of an article, a newspaper column, a book, or a piece of text. 

When your reading shifts above the vocabulary recognition and word awareness, it adds essence. The comprehension skills turns letters, words, and sentences into ideas. 

Comprehension is a designed element of reading and happens before, during, and after you read. By comprehending what you are reading, you can derive meaning from the passage and better understand what the writer is attempting to channel to you.

woman, she's reading, old man,

Reading is one of the important methods you learn new knowledge. “As one study in Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences states: ‘Reading comprehension is one of the most complex cognitive activities in which humans engage, making it difficult to teach, measure, and research.'”

There are two workings of reading comprehension: content or text comprehension and vocabulary recognition. Text comprehension is applying this style to establish an awareness of what the explanation is behind the text. Vocabulary recognition is the capacity to grasp the language being adopted.

There can be many ways you can have your reading comprehension with a stroke. These are some examples.

  1. Difficulty with vision. You cannot see properly, so you cannot comprehend.
  2. Difficulty informed or decoding a single word.
  3. Left or Right neglect causing you to not notice the right or left side. You cannot read from one line to the next because you do not notice the end (right) or beginning (left) of the line. 
  4. Difficulty processing longer portion of the text. You are being overloaded with too many words. This will cause you to lose mental focus.
Man, reading, studying, writing

These are 3 ways to improve your comprehension.

  1. Come up with questions about the text you are reading.
  2. Look for the main idea.
  3. Write a summary of what you read.

Let’s dive into each point.

First, the brain just can’t help but answer questions. Any question. If you can hit upon 1, 2 or several questions that will probably be covered in the new text you are about to read, you will answer the questions as you read.

Second, before you start reading the section, attempt to find a summary of what you are going to read. Or look for the table of contents where the chapters are outlined. Sometimes there will be a summary for each chapter. When you have the main idea, you get it substantiated by reading the section or chapter.

Last, it will help you comprehend what you just have read. When you take a few minutes to write down the key concepts you have read, you will have a better understanding of your reading.

That it. Do these 3 items when you read and you will improve your comprehension. Fiction or nonfiction. Try it next time you read. Whether you had a stroke or not, the capacity of your reading will improve dramatically!

Let me know below in the comments if you used these 3 tips and they boosted your comprehension when you read.

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