It is useless attempting to answer an English comprehension passage without having some strategies up your sleeve.
If you think English comprehension strategies comprise only answering techniques, think again.
One of the main problems students encounter in the English comprehension paper is the text itself.
Most students will just run through it cursorily and attempt without even knowing what the main topic points are.
And why do they do that?
They seriously think that is the correct method as they had used it in primary school.
And, they think it saves time.
Do you think you can arrive at the correct answers for those English comprehension questions about ‘intentions’, ‘implications’ and ‘suggestions’?
I don’t need to tell you the answer. Maybe.
They may arrive at half the answer and miss out on the other half.
Ok. Now let me outline what you should do First.
The English comprehension passage is everything
Treat the English comprehension text seriously for goodness sake.
Read it quickly the first time but you should dwell on the main point for every paragraph before you move on to the next one.
Treating the text seriously means you have to underline the words which you do not know.
Why?
If you do not know that word at all, you will have to read the sentences before and after in English comprehension.
Trust me, you will have some idea of what that means after this.
The last thing you should do is to ignore it and move on.
Differentiating between the longer and shorter paragraphs
The purpose of the short paragraph
You will need to be careful with these.
Short paragraphs may have only dialogue in it.
Just a sentence, perhaps.
It could reveal an important point or it may show you that the character is proceeding with something.
A one or two-liner paragraph with only narrative lines could mean something is important.
An author will never just use just a short paragraph for no reason.
Your job is to understand what the message is in that paragraph.
Or try to understand the hidden meaning.
And what is even more important is that you may have a question based on that dialogue or the hidden meaning.
A short paragraph may be combined with the next paragraph for the English comprehension question portion and you will have to detect these meanings when answering.
The purpose of the long paragraph
Then the longer paragraphs are infinitely more complex in construction.
They contain about 2-4 points in that paragraph.
What I mean is that they will contain several important bits of information which allude to the main character or the theme.
Each piece of information is crucial to helping you understand the progression in the text.
What is going to happen next?
Why is it happening this way?
What is the character trying to do or not do?
Longer paragraphs will be more explanatory and have elaborations which will help you to understand the sequence of events.
Longer paragraphs are therefore easier to understand through these details but are also challenging as you will have to understand what each detail means.
The next important strategy will help you to tackle those difficult phrases where you just can’t understand the meaning.
This could be due to your failure to understand the vocabulary used or the hidden meaning.
How to understand phrases with hidden meanings
Actually, this is the most important English comprehension strategy of all.
If you really understand these phrases, you will have no problem at all in answering.
All questions are based on phrases with hidden meanings or where the consequence or sequence of events is primary to the text.
If you have a phrase where the vocabulary used just eludes you, do not fret.
Just skip over it and try to understand the words which you do know.
Then just read the sentence before and the one after.
You still do not understand, do you?
However, after reading it like this, you will notice that you have a vague idea or a certain feeling about it.
Good. That is what I want you to understand.
This feeling about the phrase is very important.
It means that you are trying to infer.
That is the main purpose in asking such questions in the question portion.
You need to push yourself to have a ‘feel’ of the phrase.
Keep practicing and your inference ability will improve.
The 2 mark Analysis question
All 2 mark analysis questions demand 2 answers.
There is no hesitation in this.
Sometimes, the question may ask you “Did Rowen actually tend to his plants?
What did he really do?”
Students will usually jump onto the second question and answer ‘what did he really do’?
Failure to say whether he tended to his plants or not will mean that you will lose one mark.
This is really such a simple task which you have to do.
I just do not understand why students will always just answer one of the two questions when it is asking for 2 answers.
Please pay attention to the wording in the question.
Answer carefully and make sure your 2 mark answer has more than one detail in English comprehension.
It should never be a short, one phrase answer.
If you understand this, all the 2 mark questions are in your bag!
Well, dear students, we have come to the end of this rather unusual blog which pays attention to the art of reading as well as answering.
These are valuable tips and they are all yours to use and gain the best credits possible.