Comprehending English passages is one main objective in learning English subject at university. Students are expected to acknowledge both general and specific English terms dealing with their majors. Moreover, as intellectual people, students must be able to comprehend any scientific writings such as: articles, textbooks, reports, journals, research papers, etc.in addition, the main capital to understand English passage is vocabulary. In other words, the more vocabulary someone has, the easier the reading passage to be learned.
In the following list, you will find some essential notes that can help you to comprehend a reading passage.
- In reading English passages, students have to pay attention to several effective reading strategies below. They are:
- Spend enough time to read a passage several times. It means you have to read the passage twice or three times.
- While reading passage, you had better produce sound so that you can hear your voice at least. By listening to your voice, it will help you to understand the content of the passage. In other words, it is not good to read in silent.
- Be careful about punctuation, such as:
- Period (stop reading with falling intonation).
- Comma (stop reading with rising intonation)
- Pause to take breath (any time with rising intonation)
- Be accustomed to writing summary of the passage either in Indonesian or in English. Writing summary is different with translating. Translating means someone will translate the whole passages starting from the first line until the end. Writing summary, on the other hand, means that someone just rewrites the main points of the passage by his own words, even though an effective summary can be achieved by translating the passage first.
- Remember the comfortable reading speed. For a native reader, the speed is around 90 – 100 words per minute, whereas for a non-native 110 – 120.
- Please, learn some reading passages on your module p. 35 – 37.