READING COMPREHENSION OUTLINE

The following section will review a comprehensive list of essential reading comprehension
skills. Recognizing, using, and understanding these skills will give you confidence and support
when you are trying to figure out what you are reading, or analyzing a passage to determine the
best answer for a question related to the passage. These skills are life-long reading skills that will
enable you to be more engaged in your academic and personal reading; you will also so be able
to locate and answer questions easier and faster.
For each of the following skills, I will provide:
1) A definition;
2) A detailed explanation of the skill;
3) Examples using the particular skill; and
4) A practice test for each skill
These are some of the essential reading skills.
Sections:
Basic Reading Comprehension
1. Locating information in the text: This will serve as the building block as I explain
reading comprehension and begin to go in more detail with each skill. This will focus on key
words, identifying questions, sorting information and understanding meaning.

2. Skimming and scanning: This will serve as a discussion of what both techniques are, how
they are different and how they can help in admission exams.
3. Context clues: This will focus on what context clues are and how to use them while
testing.
4. Theme: This will look at theme as a higher order concerns (as opposed to lower order
such as grammar and punctuation) and how to identify it in short and longer passages.
5. Main idea: This will look at how the main idea differs from theme, how
to recognize the big picture in a text and how to disregard the less
important information.

6. Compare and contrast: A look at what they are, how they are different
and how understanding both will help students recognize patterns in
writing, which helps them to comprehend the overall text at a higher
level
7. Summarize: A look at how to boil down a lot of details and recognize
key points and key words
8.

Paraphrase: A look at how this differs from summarize; this focuses on

making meaning out of text

9. Examining answer choices: A look at how guessing an answer can be

more about understanding how questions are worded (the verbiage
and context clues) as opposed to knowing content; also will look at
how recognizing the wrong answers can help students think about the
topic differently
Reading Longer Passages
1. Structure: A look at the following text structures: chronological, problem/solution,
expository and cause and effect
A cause is an event, action or feeling that produces a result. The result is called an effect.
The cause is why something happens, and the effect is what happened. Some key words
that help you to identify cause and effect are because, so, since and as a result.
This is a cause and effect sentence: My car would not start, so I was late for work.
2. Authors purpose: A look at how to identify and understand an authors purpose,
including looking for clues and ruling out answer choices that arent relevant
3. Authors tone: A look at how the authors perspective and attitude impacts the text and
how things such as choice of words make the tone clear
4. Cultural context
5. Benchmarking

Reading Arguments or Reading for Content

1. Authors argument In a problem-solution text structure, you should read the content to
determine what the author argues or states is the problem. Once you have located the
problem, you need to look for supporting evidence as to how to solve the problem.
Effective evidence should come in the form of facts, explanations, examples,
descriptions, definitions, comparisons, anecdotes or statistics.
Here is an example of each form of evidence:
Fact: There are 365 days in a year.
Explanation: Each year, the day makes up for Leap Year, which happens every four
years. Leap year occurs on an even year; February 29th is the calendar Leap Year. People
who are born on Leap Year only have a calendar year of their actual birthday every four
years, so some choose to celebrate their birth date on February 28th.
Example: Angela was born on Leap Year in 1972. Technically, she is 40 years of age.
However, she has only celebrated 10 calendar year birthdays.
Description: During winter months, temperatures can drop to below freezing. Frost, ice,
and even snow are part of winter. People dress in extra layers of clothing to protect
themselves from the harsh weather conditions.
Definition: A year is defined as 12 consecutive calendar months. Annually refers to
something that happens every year.
Comparison: More families take vacations during the summer months, when school is
closed, in comparison to winter months where fewer families travel.
Anecdote: In Florida it never really snows. During a short Christmas vacation to be with
family in Alabama, we were fortunate enough to see real snow that was about 6 feet deep.
However, the snow slowed traffic and caused us to have to delay our travel plans to
return to Florida.
Statistics: The National Weather Report reported that there was a 90 percent chance of

snow for Christmas Day.

2. Supporting details: A look at the importance of supporting details/claims, what they offer
to an argument and how to identify them
3. Comparison of significant speeches: This section should include excerpts from at least
two examples of such speeches; here, Id like to look at the idea of examining speeches
as arguments
4. Fact and opinion: A look at the difference between the two, word choices that highlight
each one; how to identify them
5. Drawing conclusions/inferences: A look at the importance of understanding a text, how
to assess its details, how to infer its possible meanings and why its important to not
always rely on the author to provide you with a clear conclusion
6. Authors point of view: A look at how understanding how the author feels about a topic
can connect students to a text more thoroughly and how often the POV is detailed
through narrative or character details as opposed to directly stating
7. Bias and stereotyping: A look at how these things compare and contrast, how to recognize
their impact, why they matter to an effective argument and the importance of critical
reading
8. Fallacies: A look at well-known as well as not so well-known fallacies, including
generalizations, straw man, slippery slope, begging the claim, ad hominem, circular
argument, etc
Reading Literature/Fiction
1. Character: A look at how to analyze characters and why doing so impacts students
understanding of the overall text; your suggested idea of characters motive can go here;
excerpts from texts with prolific characters would help here
2. Irony: A look at verbal, dramatic and situational irony

3. Plot: A look at analyzing the plot, including the rising action, climax and falling action:
excerpts from texts with meaningful plots would help here
4. Setting: A look at how understanding the time and place of a story can give students
context as well as a deeper understanding of the characters and plot; how to identify key
words describing the setting; excerpts from texts with detailed settings would help here

Reading Poetry
1. Imagery: A look at the impact of imagery on reading comprehension and how having a
detailed mental picture can help students remember more of the material, which is critical
in admission exams; excerpts from poems using imagery would help here
2. Dialogue and diction: A look at the difference between the two, how understanding them
can help students understand characters, setting and theme more thoroughly; excerpts
from poems using diverse dialogue and diction would help here
3. Figurative language: A look at several types of figurative language, including similes,
metaphors, hyperbole, alliteration, symbolism and personification
4. Sound devices: A look at several types of sound devices, including meter, internal rhyme,
accent, rhythm, assonance, onomatopoeia, etc