BA in Business Studies

Abstract

Reading comprehension and retention play a significant role in students’ lives. Students that have this skill tend to perform well in school and have high self-esteem. On the other hand, students with weak reading comprehension and retention have low self-esteem. Students should develop reading strategies that enhance the process. Examples of such reading strategies include visualizing, questioning, story maps, and predicting. This report investigates reading comprehension skills in detail using past literature. The report also engages in a discussion regarding deep reading and learning and explores obstacles that students face in regards to achieving reading comprehension and retention. Recommendations on how to overcome reading and comprehension obstacles will also be offered.

Introduction

Reading comprehension and retention plays an important part in information processing. Comprehension refers to the process of understanding what one is reading. Retention is the capacity to remember what was read before. As Roberts & Roberts (2008) notes, many students in college have marginal reading comprehension skills that hinder their reading skills development. The purpose of this report is to explore reading comprehension skills in detail. The paper will explore past literature on the topic. In this section, reading and comprehension strategies, deep reading and learning, among other topics, will be discussed in depth. The next part will engage in a discussion/analysis and offer recommendations on how to overcome reading and comprehension challenges. The latter part of the paper will highlight the key points and conclude the report.

Literature Review

Reading comprehension, according to Muijselaar et al. (2017), is an art of processing text, understanding its meaning and integrating it with what the student already knows. On the other hand, reading strategies refers to a planned action that assists students to translate a text into a meaning. As Kintsch & Vipond (2014) notes in their work, such strategies improve text decoding. Examples of such strategies include visualizing, questioning, story maps, predicting, among others.

Deep reading refers to an active process where the reader thoughtfully and deliberately engages in reading (Roberts and Roberts, 2008, p.136). Deep reading is in contrast with superficial or skimming, where the reader reads to get an overview of the text (Ibrahim, Sarudin and Muhamad, 2016, p.116). Higher-order thinking skills are essential for any student that looks forward to succeeding in their careers. The skills explore different types of learning. They not only assist students in thinking but also in improving their cognitive ability. 

Past research studies have indicated that reading is a complex cognitive activity where a student converses with the author through the text. Reading comprehension is essential for adequate functioning. It is also helpful towards obtaining new information about the current society and translates it into a meaningful construction. In his work, Ibrahim, Sarudin and Muhammad (2016) argue that reading comprehension is reliant on a couple of mental as well as linguistic processes. Readers should always strive to acquire a strong sense of comprehension and retention (Windham et al., 2014, p. 477). Information retention involves storing information in long term memory. On the other hand, skimming and superficial reading engage the short-term memory. 

A variety of reading strategies help readers in comprehension and retention. As Zare & Othman (2012) argue, reading strategies is essential for successful comprehension. It also remains one of the features of cognitive psychology. Muijselaar et al. (2017), work defines reading strategies as the mental processes that a reader selects to use when completing a reading task. The strategies were divided into three in Suraprajit (2019) work namely bottom-up, top-down and interactive strategies.

In bottom-up, readers use the present information in the data. They go ahead to analyze words and sentences and coming up with a meaning. In case a reader encounters an unfamiliar word in the reading text, a dictionary is used. The top-down strategy, on the other hand, uses the previously learned information to understand a text (Suraprajit, 2019, p.454). Various elements used in such kind of reading include asking questions, making predictions, paraphrasing, summarizing and translating, among others. In the interactive strategy, the reader constructs meaning from a text using both the bottom-up and the top-down strategies (Suraprajit, 2019, p.454).

Apart from the above strategies, readers use memorization techniques to ease information retention for use in the future. Examples of memorization techniques include reciting, assigning meaningfulness to words, and using memory devices. Such memory devices include acrostics, chunking and method of loci, among others. Past research shows that adequate comprehension is not an automatic experience (Muijselaar et al., 2017, p.152). On the contrary, the reader should evoke the cognitive effort expressed through purposeful, procedural and in an essential manner (Zare and Otman, 2013, p.188). Examples of techniques to enhance comprehension and retention include a habit of writing a journal and reading aloud, among others (Muijselaar et al., 2017, p.195). 

In many instances, teachers aspire to instil the deep learning skills to students. Roberts & Roberts (2008) argue that such kind of learning requires a student’s interaction with the reading text and relating with the semantic memory. Unfortunately, many colleges and universities are neglecting deep learning and concentrating more on credits, degrees, among other credentials. Zare and Otman (2013) in his their also supports the Roberts & Roberts (2008) study by pointing out that as many schools are focusing on superficial learning. In such instances, deep reading for meaning is neglected (Roberts & Roberts, 2008).

Discussion and Analysis

In the academic world, reading comprehension and retention are critical for an excellent performance. Suraprajit (2019) work argues that reading materials bring about difficulties, and such issues are solved through adhering to the retention and comprehension steps. The first thing that a reader should do towards gaining comprehension and retention skill is focusing on gaining a strong understanding. Through such an understanding, students try to comprehend various figures and facts in reading material. Retention and comprehension skills can also assist students in thinking critically (Israel, 2014, p.13).

Further questions that arise are connected to the techniques and methods that the readers adopt to develop strong a comprehension and retention. There are many techniques, as earlier mentioned. However, a new technique that readers should adopt is the SQ3R technique. This technique follows various elements including survey, question, read, recite and review. In his work, Gibson (2018) argues that the strategy engages and supports readers in building arguments and even criticizing the text read. Khusniyah, Rasyid & Lustyantie (2018) argue that the SQ3R strategy draws attention to the reader, who is the student in this case.

When a student develops reading retention and comprehension skills, there is a likelihood of having an optimistic attitude right through their academic life and vice versa. Muijselaar et al. (2017) argue that strong reading and retention skills improve students’ self-esteem, not only in class but also in the outside world. However, there are a couple of obstacles that hinder such learning. Many readers continue to face challenges in comprehension and retention. In his work, Israel (2014) argues that the leading cause for such a challenge is reasons within a student. For example, the student may mismatch the already fed material and information from a new text. Additionally, some materials don’t match what the earlier acquired and hence creating a hindrance. 

Other readers have argued that their difficulties in retention and comprehension are connected to the heavy vocabularies use in a reading text (Alkhawaldeh, 2012, p.39). In such a case, it becomes a challenge for the reader to grasp the text meaning. Additionally, some readers experience issues in reading and comprehension as a result of the lack of concentration when reading. In some cases, poor readers skim through a text and where the full attention is not given. Such careless is a significant obstacle towards comprehending, understanding and evaluating a reading material. 

Recommendations

Gaining the comprehension and retention skill calls for the partnership between the teachers, students and institutions. As Al-Ghazo (2015) argues in his work, the first step to tackle this challenge is offering a wide range of vocabularies to the students. With many vocabularies at hand, grasping what a text meant becomes easier. Moreover, the teacher can decide to give the readers an easy task that matches their level of understanding. For the institutions, they should encourage students to engage in deep learning. For many years, academic institutional have encouraged superficial learning to attain credentials. They should introduce learning lessons where students are expected to read, understand and remember what is read. In such a case, students may pay closer attention to the text rather than memorizing. Alkhawaldeh (2012) proposes that educational institutions should introduce reading assignments regularly. Through such regulated morals, such students will make reading a repetitive approach. 

Conclusion

Reading comprehension and retention has, for many years, been a challenge to readers. Because of the academic institutions’ outlook of encouraging high grades and credits, students are participating more on superficial learning. Superficial learning may assist one in remembering a few elements read before a test. However, students require deep learning that engages the long-term memory. Towards overcoming issues in regards to reading and comprehension, students and tutors have a part to play. For readers, the knowledge on how to apply various reading strategies is critical. Teachers also have a responsibility of teaching students many vocabularies and encouraging them to adopt deep learning. From the above analysis, it is evident that academic retention and comprehension is a critical task for every student. Such a skill strengthens the basis to which individuals function.

References

Al-Ghazo, A., 2015. The Effect of SQ3R and Semantic Mapping Strategies on Reading Comprehension Learning among Jordanian University Students. English and Education, 4(3), pp.92-106.

Alkhawaldeh, A., 2012. High School Students’ Challenges in English Reading Comprehension in Amman Second Directorate of Education. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 39.

Gibson, S.R.C., 2018. A Study Into the Effect of SQ3R with Cooperative Learning on the Reading Progress of Student Nurses (Doctoral dissertation, Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University).

Holden, C.J., Zeigler-Hill, V., Pham, M.N. and Shackelford, T.K., 2014. Personality features and mate retention strategies: Honesty–humility and the willingness to manipulate, deceive, and exploit romantic partners. Personality and Individual Differences, 57, pp.31-36.

Ibrahim, E., Sarudin, I. and Muhamad, A., 2016. The Relationship between Vocabulary Size and Reading Comprehension of ESL Learners. English Language Teaching, 9(2), p.116.

Israel, S., 2014. Handbook of Research on Reading Comprehension. Routledge.

Khusniyah, N., Rasyid, Y. and Lustyantie, N., 2018. Improving English Reading Comprehension: The Role of Visual Mind Mapping in SQ4R Strategy. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Science and Technology for an Internet of Things. European Alliance for Innovation (EAI).