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Comprehension is about
how speedily you are able to understand a written piece. Most people
stress on reading word per minute. However, even if you are reading very
speedily but cant understand a thing, speed wont help you. And so
comprehension or understanding per minute is the right kind of speed that
one needs to maintain.
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Try to understand
speedily and not just read.
Whenever you see a passage,
do have a feel of it by reading the first few lines. See if that
is the kind of subject that interests you. I have seen people
choosing passages on the basis of their length. That is both good
and bad. The bad part is that most short passages have indirect
questions and they are generally more difficult to comprehend. So
choose on the basis of your comfort level with the subject and not
only on the basis of its length.
The Central
Idea
After choosing a passage, you need to get what they call its ‘central
idea’. Draw a circle on a piece of paper and make a dot in the middle.
This circle is the passage and that dot is the central idea. In
other words, every passage will revolve around a central idea. This
central idea is not the theme on which the passage is based or the
gist of the passage. It is the purpose for which the author has
written the passage. If you are able to get the central idea of
the passage, you would be able to comprehend it better and answer
the questions better.
Chunks of
Information
A very good way of cracking the comprehension
of a long passage is to divide the whole passage into small packets
of information. For example
you read the first few paras, and underline the important points
and try to keep them in mind. You can also enlist the important
points on a rough piece of paper and read on the further paras,
jot down the points again and so on. Though jotting down points
may not be advisable every time as you may not have time, you can
always keep the chunks of information in your mind while reading.
This is important
because often after reading the entire passage, people think they have
forgotten what they read in the beginning of it. This could be a scary
thing to happen to you if you have wasted, lets say, full five minutes, on
reading a passage. So just to save you reading the passage all over again,
you must try and keep chunks of information in your mind while reading.
You can also keep underlining anything that you think is important.
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Dealing With
Question/Answers
Broadly, the questions can be divided into two categories: direct and
indirect. Lets first deal with the direct questions.
Direction questions are obviously related to explicit facts
given in the passage. For ex- What were the scientists researching? Or
What was the name of the thesis? Etc.
One way to choose a
passage from the options is also to glance at the questions. If most of
the questions are direct in nature, you have a better chance of scoring.
So you can pick up a passage that has more direct questions.
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The indirect questions are asked to directly gauge your
comprehension skills. They are the real test of your understanding and
comprehension. First of all, try and avoid as much as possible, passages
that have more number of indirect questions. Still if you have to pick a
passage that has such questions, here’s a way to deal with them.
Indirect questions would be about the tone of the passage,
writing style of the author or questions such as: What does the
author mean when he says, “I think I would make friends with my
enemy’s enemy?” or what does the presence of ‘packets of lies’ implies
in the passage? It is clear
that you will not get to the answers of such questions easily. But
still you have to find the answers from the passage only. The tones
of the authors could be descriptive, analytical, critical etc.
A descriptive tone is
generally like the articles published on the Edit page of a newspaper.
A narrative tone would
sound like a story---points flowing in one by one-like a news report.
A critical tone is something you can easily distinguish. So if there is
any question on the type of tone, you will need to be observative about
the passage right from the start.
As for other kind
of questions, trying to figure out the central idea and diving the
information into chunks of information are the only two ways of
getting to the right answers. The
best way to practice comprehension is editorials of newspapers like
The Hindustan Times and The Hindu and also the articles published
on the Edit pages.
Choosing
the right passage:
As stated before, you can choose the passage on the basis of the
following (if there is a choice ie.):
* Comfort level with the
subject or topic of the passage
* Length of the passage
* Type of questions of the passage and the number of direct questions
Contributing Writer:
Mukti Masih has been a reporter with The Times of India, The
Free Press Journal. Has worked as senior sub-editor with The Maharashtra
Herald (now Sakaal Times) in Pune. Has a four-year work experience of
writing, editing and blogging & has a great flair for writing.muktimasih2@gmail.com
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