Comprehension is the ability of a reader to understand a message in the way the speaker is intending to be understood.
Sprosty (1993)says reading comprehension is the process of constructing meaning from written work. It is viewed as an instructive process that the text and the reader. The reader will be using the knowledge of oral language. Comprehension refers to the predictious ,a reader has to foretell what is going to happen.
Comprehension requires practice ,where there is the need to read a lot inorder to understand and develop comprehension skills.If the reader is not attentive comprehension will not take place and if there is distruction again comprehension is difficulty. The teacher tend to be sensitive to distribution to enhence comprehension. Fluency ,accurate reading ,reading doesn't mean comprehension is effective.
The teacher can conduct a comprehension lesson through pre-reading exercise to capture the infamiliar words and discuss with children. During reading exercise have sentences or questions from every paragraph to improve their understanding. And post reading activities ask questions specifically from the passage .The teacher can then give a written exercise.
METHODS OF READING COMPREHENSION
Pre-reading stage ,the teacher to discuss unfamiliar words with pupils to brainstorm on the passage. It is necessary to ensure that every child have understood what you want them to understand.
Secondly the teacher should do a model reading. Make children use words from comprehensiom and then the teacher give a brief summary of the passage.
HOW TO TEACH COMPREHENSION
(1)CONVENTIONAL FOR INFANTS
The teacher should identify unfamiliar words and give to pupils their meanings with use of pictures to reinforce the word. Teacher can also do model reading on silent reading. Now ask questions from the passage referencing keywords.The teacher may ask children where they are getting their answers.
(2)CONTIGENCE APPROACH/METHOD FOR MIDDLE GRADES
This approach calls for pupils to be able to deduce contextual meanings using the passege. Children may say out words or sentences to demostrate that they gave picked the meaning of the word.
How to go about the reading? The teacher can demostrate by reading aloud and contextual meaning. Give short summary and tell the theme of the whole passage then ask questions.
(3)RADICAL APPROACH/METHOD FOR UPPER GRADES.
It is premised on the understanding that the best way to teach a child to swim is to throw the child to the deep of the swimming pool not to the shallow.Instead of teaching a child how to swim ,let the child learn on his own .It is therefore up to the teacher to introduce the complicated part of comprehension or the less complicated part.
The teacher may not even demostrate pupils to do silent reading instead you may ask children to do on their own. Given some work based on the passage that they have read. Children are then expected to answer questions refering back to the passage to show an understanding.
Barret's taxinomy of comprehension classify reading comprehension:
(a) literal comprehension which is simple knowledge of things focusing on ideas as they are explicitly stated in the passage.
(b)Recognition is the act of making sense out of issues in the passage ,pupils can see these words and able to communicate. Recognition can only mean remembering of detail and idea.
(c)Recall is simply retrieve,remembering or taking back knowledge,by classify ,summarise and synthesise to get the meaning.
INFERENTIAL COMPREHENSION STAGE
At this stage pupils has the ability ,intonation being able to make meaning and make reference on what has read before.
EVALUATION STAGE
At this stage pupils are able to make judgement .They able to see good or bad on the passage .At this level pupils are now able to pick facts and appreciate facts. They can able to pick emotions from the passage.
REFERENCE
Sprosty L. (1995)Teaching Reading Language in Primary schools.
Module one :Teaching language.
Stagger ,C.R.(1993)The Teaching of Reading.
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