Strategies for Student Success: Adolescent Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension refers to one’s ability to understand what one reads. Successful comprehension requires a complex synchrony of skills. Readers must decode words, retrieve word meanings, construct meaning from sentences and paragraphs, integrate meaning with previous text, connect information to life experiences, and correct misunderstandings (Denton et al., 2015). Comprehension is an automatic process for most readers, but those who struggle often require explicit instruction and intensive practice in reading comprehension skills (Pressly, 2000).