7 Tips to Improve Reading Comprehension Skills

Reading comprehension can feel overwhelming for children preparing for the 11-Plus exam. Text extracts are intentionally hard to challenge children’s ability to infer meaning from a text. 

If your child only wolfs down fun page-turners, comprehension practice can feel especially tough and boring!  But fear not, because there are lots of ways that your child can improve their comprehension skills. 

If you are preparing for the 11-Plus, you first need to know the exam style that your target school(s) will use. Schools will normally publish this information on their website. 

Top Tip!

Knowing the exam format for your target school(s) will enable you to select the most relevant preparation material. 

Here are the main exam formats:

• ISEB pre-test: short text extracts online extracts with multiple-choice questions.
• Standard format: Normally these papers have a long passage with written answers. Exam marks for questions can range between (1) to (12) marks. 
• Bespoke format: Used by some independent schools, these papers can have a mix of multiple-choice and long-written answers. 
• London Consortium: Short text extracts online with multiple-choice questions.
• GL: Short to medium length text extracts with multiple-choice questions.
• CEM: Short text extracts with largely multiple-choice questions.

Should we skip reading the passage?

It’s tempting to think that jumping straight into the questions, without first reading the text, is efficient. Doing this is especially tempting when questions follow the pattern of ‘go to line 14…’. 

However, this is not a strategy. 

If your child dives straight into the questions, sure, they are likely to find the relevant information from the passage, but this isn’t the whole picture…Their answers will most likely be incomplete and show limited understanding of the text. This is because they haven’t taken the time to read and digest the context. With just snippets of information, they miss seeing the wider picture and this will be reflected in their answers. 

Also, whilst your child is focused on zipping through the questions, their mindset will be mindless mode. Reading the text slows your child down so they can process the meaning behind the words. Sometimes you need to slow down in order to speed up, and reading comprehension is a perfect example. 

Exam papers will tell you how much time you should spend on reading the text. It’s normally 5 minutes and perhaps 10 minutes for longer passages. 

Text extracts can be based on:

• English Classic fiction
• Contemporary fiction
• Poetry
• Non-fiction

After your child has read the text they may like to scan read the questions before answering. This is more relevant for children sitting written paper-based exams. Doing this can suit some children as it can help them to feel more confident. 

Read The Text Aloud 

Reading the passage aloud when preparing for the 11-Plus is highly recommended. First, it’s helpful for children to slow down, in order to take in what they are reading. When we read aloud it’s natural to self-edit as we go along.

It’s also useful for revealing reading patterns, for example, is your child a fast or slow reader? Do they take notice of full-stops and commas? Do they invent words? Do they miss lots of small words? How do they approach unknown words? Are they fluent? Being aware of these signs can help you to build a full picture of your child’s reading abilities. Helping your child grow their self-awareness around their reading skills is empowering. 

Summarise Key Ideas

For children who are in the early stage of exam prep, spending some time summarising the key ideas within a text is beneficial. 

Asking your child some questions will tell you whether they understand the gist of the text. It makes sense to do this paragraph by paragraph, so it doesn’t feel too overwhelmingly boring!

If children are struggling to say anything about a text, it can be helpful to draw the key ideas – in a way that is meaningful to them – making the process more engaging. 

Talk About Tricky Words 

There is often ambitious and sometimes obscure vocabulary in 11-Plus texts. Talking about tricky words and what they might mean is helpful.

As a parent or tutor, you don’t need to know every word in the text. Modelling your curiosity for a new word will help children’s word confidence grow as they’ll learn that it’s okay not to know every word. 

Read For Context

When a question asks you to go to a particular line in the text, always read the full sentence, the line before and the line after. This will ensure your child understands the context needed to answer the question correctly, without jumping to the wrong conclusion. 

Underline Key Information (paper-based)

If a question asks you to identify X number of points from the text, it’s helpful to underline each point in the text. This ensures you don’t waste time having to find each relevant bit, so you can focus on composing your answer. 

Targeted Practice 

It’s helpful to notice which comprehension skills in particular need more practice. For example, ‘inference’ is normally an area of development for many children preparing for school entrance exams.

Targeting weak areas specific to your child will help improve their progress and confidence. You can buy reading papers that focus purely on inference skills. 

Prioritise Reading 

Undoubtedly, reading is my number one top tip for improving your child’s comprehension skills. Consistency is key so scheduling times for reading will create a healthy habit. 

But be aware, there are no quick fixes, it takes time to transfer and embed a reading passion into improved comprehension skills. 

Listening to audio stories during long car trips is relaxing (for your child), fun and great for their learning.They will absorb word pronunciations without being conscious of it. This way of absorbing stories is especially great for children where English is an additional language in the family household. 

Conclusion 

Developing reading comprehension skills takes confidence, ample practice and lots of happy little mistakes! There are many ways to help your child succeed with their comprehension. The key is to focus on building confidence and to explore any underlying difficulties, so you can empower your child’s learning with knowledge and skills.