The most important thing is to understand what a reading comprehension is. A reading comprehension is a passage based on which, you are asked certain questions. The questions can be multiple choice questions or the subjective questions. So in the exam, you will have a reading passage and there will be a few questions based on the reading passage.
Now whenever there is a reading comprehension, there is a set of directions given in the starting of the questions and those directions mention a statement that says, "Read the given passage very carefully"
Here in this article you will get to know how to answer the questions quickly and very correctly.
Now first thing that we are going to do is that we would
Start reading the question first not the reading passage
Go through all the questions first and try to highlight what is being asked in the questions because after reading the question , you actually have an idea what questions you are going to look for.
When you read the passage, there are few important things that you must keep in your mind that there can be a set of information that is asked in the reading comprehension.
DIRECT INFORMATION
This kind of questions focus on direct things written in the reading passage like:
- Factual information
- Past knowledge
- Grammar
- Connecting ideas
DERIVED INFORMATION
It means when you read the passage, you try to derive an answer to the questions asked. For example, there are two experiments whose success rates are 80% and 90 % and you are asked to get the average success rate of the two experiments.So try to do something like
80+90/2 =85 %
So, here you are actually deriving an answer to the questions.
ANALYTICAL INFORMATION
Here, you try to analyze the information which means , you try to understand an idea and try to analyze something that can be author’s tone ( what does the author suggest or the what does the passage imply)
SYNTHESIZING THE INFORMATION
Here you are trying to see that this passage explains something that is applicable in this situation and what would be the addition in a new situation. Then you try to predict what would be the outcome in that new situation.
Now another important thing you must consider while solving any question is FAMILIARITY WITH THE TOPIC. Now here you are going to solve that passage first which you are familiar with. For example If I am a science student, then I would try to solve that passage first which is based on Science.
Now let us try to apply all these techniques.
Here it is just a piece of information that has been taken from a passage.
- What is the specific characteristic of bottom water?
- What is the antonym for the word abundant?
In the passage
Characteristic of bottom water: devoid of oxygen which means that it does not have sufficient oxygen. This is a kind of DIRECT INFORMATION.Now coming to second question which asks the antonym of the word which means you need to find the opposite of the word abundant. It could be insufficient or less.
Now move on to the next passage:
Based on the information given in the passage, I have highlighted the information in the passage.
The first three questions are based on the grammar.
- It has a population…… ( choose ‘has’ between has/have /had because the subject is singular and the passage is about present)
- trading and entertaining capital of (choose ‘of’ because it is the correct preposition)
- major industries in Mumbai today are ( choose ‘are’ between is/are/were because ‘industries’ is plural and the line is about present)
These are the kind direct questions based on grammar.
Connecting Ideas:
What is the name of movie-making industry in India?
You can see in the second paragraph, there are two sentences.
- The movie-making industry is especially important because it provides jobs to thousands of people every day. The name given to this industry in India is “Bollywood”.
Now here you have to connect the two ideas to get the answer. So our answer would be “Bollywood”.
What is the similar name to BOLLYWOOD in America?
Now referring it to the next sentence in the paragraph we get our answer as HOLLYWOOD. Here again we are connecting the two ideas.
ANALYZING INFORMATION:
What is HOLLYWOOD?
Now from the passage we know that movie-making industry in India is BOLLYWOOD and it is similar to HOLLYWOOD. So what we analyze here is that HOLLYWOOD is also a movie-making place in America.
Downloads
Download Reading Comprehension Workbook here