Strategies for Improving Teen Reading Comprehension

1. READ. What a concept!

Don't read for the teacher, or read for a grade-read for yourself. Nothing changes you like reading. Nothing increases your curiosity, intellect, and knowledge like reading. Someday you will be asked, perhaps by your own children, "Hey, did you ever read Hamlet?" And of course you'll say, "Yeah, senior year in high school." Only you will know if you cheated yourself out of reading it. Only you will know that you didn't meet the challenge, and that Hamlet beat you.

If you heard a film was fabulous, would you ask a friend or online critic to summarize it for you, assuming their summaries are as good as experiencing it yourself? Of course not. Then why rob yourself out of experiencing famous literature and creating opinions that are solely YOURS?

2. Listen to your inner voices. Yep, they're normal.

You have three inner reading voices.

The first voice is the voice in your head, reading the lines. It's your reading voice, sounding out the words, reading the sentences.

The second voice is the one that responds to the text. It says things like, "Huh? What's going on? I forgot who that character is again...let me go back and check..." or "Ugh! Her best friend slapped her! I'd hit her back...or walk away...yeah, right....Well, she kind of deserved it after betraying her..."

The third voice is your distracting voice, the one that starts leading you on a tangent, such as, "I remember when my friend did that to me. At my locker. I hope my locker doesn't get stuck tomorrow. I'll have to go to the office for help, and I'll look like an idiot. Hee hee, that kid who fell at lunch was an idiot...Oh, crap, I've read two pages and I have no idea what happened. Oh well, I'll keep reading from here and figure it out...Oh, yeah, I still have math homework, crap..."

Obviously, you need the first and second voices. If you only hear the first one, however, you are not THINKING while reading, and later you won't remember any of it. You need the second voice to grasp the information, to connect yourself to what's going on, and to question which parts you understand and which parts are confusing you.