Levels of Comprehension

Components of Literal Comprehension

Recognize the Topic

A topic is a word, name, or short phrase that tells who or what the author is writing about; it is the subject of the text. Often the topic may appear in the title or headings, special print - such as bold italics, or color font, and/or may be repeated throughout a text.

Determining the topic is the essential first step in comprehending a passage. It focuses your attention and helps you understand complex paragraphs.

Identify the Stated Main Idea

A stated main idea is a sentence explicitly stated in the text, containing both the topic and the author’s most important point about this topic. It may be located anywhere within the text.

In academic writing, the thesis (main idea) is often explicit: it is included as a sentence as part of the text. It might be near the beginning of the text, but not always–some types of academic writing leave the main idea until the conclusion.

Journalism and reporting also rely on explicit thesis statements that appear very early in the piece–the first paragraph or even the first sentence.

Locating the Stated Main Idea

First, ask yourself: “What is the topic?” Knowing the topic can help you find a writer’s main point about that topic. Look for words or ideas that are repeated. That’s probably the topic. The topic might even be stated in the title. Then, ask yourself: “What does the writer say about that topic?”

Start at the beginning.  The main idea is often at the beginning—but not always.
Sometimes writers start with background information. Don’t confuse this with the main idea.  Always ask yourself: “Does everything in the text support this one idea?” If not, then it is not the main idea.

Look for the general versus specific information. Writers use specific facts, figures, and other details to make a point. That point is usually the main idea, which is a general statement. 

Also look for signal words. List words suggest the main idea. Addition words suggest details that, together, support the main idea. Sometimes a transition word that suggests contrast also points to the main idea.  For a list of signal words, visit this website.

Identify Supporting Details

Supporting details provide additional information that helps the reader fully understand the main idea. In other words, supporting details explain, illustrate or prove the author’s point.

• Major details (primary details): directly support the main idea

• Minor details (secondary details): support, explain or elaborate the major details

The following image shows the visual relationship between the topic, main idea, and supporting ideas:

Support and Elaboration

Support and elaboration consist of the specific details and information writers use to develop their topics. The key to developing support and elaboration is getting specific. Good writers use concrete, specific details and relevant information to construct mental images for their readers. Without this attention to detail, readers struggle to picture what the writer is talking about and will often give up altogether.

Two important concepts in support and elaboration are sufficiency and relatedness.

Sufficiency

Sufficiency refers to the amount of detail — is there enough detail to support the topic? Good writers supply their readers with sufficient details to comprehend what they have written. In narrative writing, this means providing enough descriptive details for the readers to construct a picture of the story in their minds. In essay writing, this means the author finds enough information to support a thesis, and also finding information that is credible and accurate.

Sufficiency, however, is not enough. The power of information is determined less by the quantity of details than by their quality.

Relatedness

Relatedness refers to the quality of the details and their relevance to the topic. Good writers select only the details that will support their focus, deleting irrelevant information. In narrative writing, details should be concrete: they contribute to, rather than detract from, the picture provided by the narrative. In essay writing, information should be relevant to the writer’s goal and strengthen the writer’s ability to meet that goal.

Recognize Organizational Patterns

Organizational patterns are authors’ ways of organizing information they present. They are also called writing patterns, patterns of development, and rhetorical patterns.

If you can identify the pattern the author is using in their writing, you will find it easier to comprehend what they are saying.

The video to the right addresses six common patterns of structure and development. These will be common in non-fiction, academic reading you do in college.

To recap, the six patterns in the video are:

1. Simple listing

2. Order of importance

3. Chronological order

4. Spatial development

5. Cause and effect

6. Comparison and contrast

Components of Inferential Comprehension 

Identify the Implied Main Idea 

Every text has a main idea, but not every text includes a stated (explicit) main idea sentence. When an author gives you the information needed to understand the main point without directly stating it in a sentence, the main idea is implied (implicit). The implied main idea is a sentence formulated by the reader that expresses the author’s main point about the topic. The reader must infer the main idea and create a sentence that expresses it. 

Monitoring Comprehension 

Summarizing - condensing someone else’s ideas and putting it into your own shortened form - is one of the most effective strategies for monitoring comprehension: when you can accurately summarize what a text is saying, you can be assured that you’ve accurately captured the main idea of the text you’re reading.

Consider these guidelines for writing a summary: 

• A summary should contain the main thesis or standpoint of the text, restated in your own words. (To do this, first find the thesis statement in the original text.)

• A summary is written in your own words. It contains few or no quotes.

• If you quote anything from the original text, even an unusual word or a catchy phrase, you need to put whatever you quote in quotation marks (” “).

• A summary is always shorter than the original text, often about 1/3 as long as the original.  An article or paper may be summarized in a few sentences or a couple of paragraphs. A book may be summarized in an article or a short paper.  A very large book may be summarized in a smaller book.

• A summary should contain all the major points of the original text, and should ignore most of the fine details, examples, illustrations or explanations (minor details).

The backbone of any summary is formed by crucial (major) details (key names, dates, events, words and numbers). A summary must never rely on vague generalities.

A summary must contain only the ideas of the original text. Do not insert any of your own opinions, interpretations, deductions or comments into a summary.

Paraphrasing a Thesis Statement - Every piece of writing has a thesis statement, a sentence that captures the main idea of the text. Some are explicit—stated directly in the text itself. Others are implicit—implied by the content but not written in one distinct sentence.

A key part of understanding a thesis statement of a text is being able to express it in your own words. This paraphrase of a thesis is a key component in summarizing a reading accurately.

The video to the right offers advice for locating a text’s thesis statement. It asks you to write one or two sentences that summarize the text. When you write that summary, without looking at the text itself, you’ve actually paraphrased the thesis statement.

An Example of an Effective Paraphrase - Compare this direct quote, which comes from an article in The New York Times discussing the relocation and redevelopment of a train station in New York City, with an effective paraphrase:

• Original Quote: “New tracks aside, the challenge is at the bare minimum to bring light and air into this underground purgatory and, beyond that, to create for millions of people a new space worthy of New York, a civic hub in the spirit of the great demolished one, more attuned to the city’s aspirations and democratic ideals.” – Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times

• Effective Paraphrase: One of the biggest issues facing Penn Station’s revitalization is developing a brighter, airier space. It is an abysmal “underground purgatory,” and with so many New Yorkers and tourists traveling in and out of its doors every day, should be reconstructed to better reflect the endeavors and passions of the city (Kimmelman).

Make Inferences and Draw Conclusions - Making inferences is a comprehension strategy used by proficient readers to “read between the lines,” make connections, and draw conclusions about the text’s meaning and purpose.

Effective reading involves understanding not only what the author directly states, but also what the author suggests. An inference is a logical conclusion based on what an author has stated. A conclusion is a decision that is reached after thoughtful consideration of the information the author presents. For more information, watch the video to the right.

Making Inferences as You Read - To make inferences from reading, take two or more details from the reading and see if you can draw a conclusion. Remember, making an inference is not just making a wild guess. You need to make a judgment that can be supported by evidence from the text.

When you are asked an inference question, go back over the reading and look for hints within the text, such as words that are directly related to the question you may be asked (such as for a multiple-choice test) or words that indicate opinion.

Here is an example:

Hybrid cars are good for the environment, but they may not perform as well as cars that run only on gasoline. The Toyota Prius gets great gas mileage and has low emissions, making it a good, “green” option. However, many people think that it is unattractive. The Prius also cannot accelerate as quickly as other models and cannot hold as many passengers as larger gas-fueled SUVs and vans. Compared to similar gas-fueled options, hybrid cars also cost more money up front. A new hybrid car costs almost $3,500 more than the same car configured to run just on gasoline.

Which of the following can you infer from the passage?

1. Hybrid cars are more dangerous than other options.

2. Toyota is making a lot of money from the Prius.

3. Cars that use gasoline are going to destroy the environment.

4. Hybrid cars may not be the best choice for everyone.

All four answers are about hybrid cars in some way (the topic of the passage), but none of the answers can be found directly from the text. Read through and see what hints you can find from the text.

• You will notice right away that there is nothing about car safety in the passage at all, so you can eliminate choice 1.

• Choice 2 is implied: if the car cost $3,500 more than other cars, then Toyota would be making a lot of money by selling the car. But is it the most reasonable conclusion? To be sure, you need to go through all of the answers—don’t just stop when you find one that looks okay.

• You may think that choice 3 is true. After all, people want to make hybrid cars because they believe that emissions are contributing to environmental damage, but this is not mentioned in the paragraph. Even if you think it is true, the answer has to be supported by the text to be the correct answer to the problem.

• Choice 4 could be inferred from the text. If a person had a large family, was short on money, or needed a car that could accelerate quickly, then a hybrid might not be the best choice for them.

• Now compare choice 3 with the other possible answer, choice 2. Now you are thinking choice 2 might not be as good an answer because you don’t know how much it costs Toyota to make the cars, and you don’t know how many they sell, so you can’t reasonably infer that they are making a lot of money! Choice 4 has to be the correct answer.