What is reading comprehension?

A reading test or reading comprehension exam is a test to see how well you can understand media. It’s not a simple test of reading and find the answer, it’s a test that examines a wide breadth of skills, in particular, whether:

• you can understand the subtleties in meaning e.g. when someone uses the word “furious” instead of “angry”.
• you can see how punctuation changes the pace or meaning of a text. You see, this is what I mean!
• you know how stories convey feelings.
• you can distinguish between the purpose of different types of texts and their characteristics.
• you know the order of various different pieces and can use this knowledge to work through the text.
• you know the difference between literal and figurative.
• you can understand a text (even if it’s a new topic), get insight from it and understand it from different perspectives.

You see, it’s not just simply reading. It’s obtaining meaning, from the medium that is media – texts and images.

Think about the game called “Pass the Message” (sometimes it is called different names), if you’ve played this game, what you’ll see is the original message is often distorted or changed once it gets to the final recipient.

The “message” is the text and you can see how complex a message can be when going from one person to another. Someone can interpret a message differently to another. It could be a common word sound that is mistaken, it could be that someone is thinking about something else.

Now, let’s look at reading comprehension, you have your text and it’s not just a simple matter of reading it. You have to figure out what the writer really intended. Who was it for? Why did they create it? What words/images did they use to convey their message?

So, in a sense, reading comprehension is very much a thinking test based on a particular piece of media.

As media and texts form the source of our reading, we’re going to examine various texts and look at strategies and tips so that you can answer these questions quickly and correctly in your exam.

Now, let’s look at the success factors in answering reading comprehension questions.

How to ACE your reading comprehension test

You may sit a reading comprehension test with other tests as part of a larger exam or sit the test as an individual stand-alone one. Whichever way, there are some things you'll need to do to ACE it.

1. Find the question.
2. Read with focus – knowing exactly what you’re looking for in a text (this requires preparation – i.e. knowing how a text is structured, what are its elements—kind of like studying the opposing team’s players weaknesses and strengths).
3. Eliminate options.
4. Use strategies that build from the bottom up (keywords, ranking, exclusion, distinguish between options – in next checkpoint) to really distinguish between remaining options and the answer.

In a competitive reading test, it’s not so much about locating information. It’s about the higher skills in understanding a text that you are reading. It’s about content, interpretation, writer’s technique and more.

The time limit

In many exams, you'll need to race through and answer question after question. Many people worry about this but the key thing to remember is not how many you complete. It's how many you get right.

In addition, some texts in reading comprehension are very long e.g. can span over 1 page. The key to dealing with this is about understanding the structure of your text and focusing on the question, so that you can locate what you’re trying to find (work backwards and deconstruct).

Here's your time strategy:

1. Read the question quickly and decide whether it is a question you can complete quickly.
2. If yes, then complete. If no, then move on and come back to it later.
3. For any remaining questions at the end (30 seconds left), complete it if you can, or guess - Option B or C is often the most likely correct answer because there could be a chance that you could select the correct option by chance.

Note: Some students have been advised that they should leave the question blank rather than guessing. Unless you lose marks for incorrect answers, our advice is to guess.

It's important to note that you should not spend more than your planned time per question. Every second that you spend on figuring out that question could have been spent getting another 2-4 correct.

Common mistakes

What are the pitfalls when it comes to reading comprehension exams with a time limit?

• Taking too long to answer a question (this is quite common where students read the text first and have to do a secondary reading).
• Reading the question incorrectly.
• Not having a strategy or an approach.

What you'll learn in this course

In this course, we help you understand the different types of reading comprehension media and the strategies and tips to best address questions associated with such media. This is so that you can answer questions more confidently in the exam.

There are different tips and strategies to take for different types of media. Why? Because each has a certain structure and purpose and having a customized approach for each one means you can move more quickly through the exam.

In particular, we’ll explore the following areas in more detail:

• Critical Test Strategies
• What's Certain and What's Not?
• Narrative - Literal
• Narrative - Figurative
• Narrative - Implied
• Non-Fiction - Provided
• Non-Fiction - Implied
• Interviews
• Historical Texts
• Autobiographical Texts
• Poetry - Structure
• Poetry - Meaning
• Cartoons - Imagery
• Cartoons - Language
• Punctuation
• Proverbs

Practice time!

Now, it's your turn to practice.

The questions in this checkpoint are provided to give you an introduction to possible questions you may see in your exam. Don't worry too much as you'll continue to build your skills throughout the course.

Click on the button below and start your practice questions. We recommend doing untimed mode first, and then, when you're ready, do timed mode.

Every question has two solutions videos after you complete the question. The first is a quick 60 second video that shows you how our expert answers the question quickly. The second video is a more in-depth 5-steps or less explainer video that shows you the steps to take to answer the question. It's really important that you review the second video because that's where you'll learn additional tips and tricks.

Once you're done with the practice questions, move on to the next checkpoint.

Now, let’s get started on your practice questions.

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