How to Better Understand And Remember What You Read

This article includes idea exercises on how to read with more understanding and memory. Reading comprehension means how well a person understands and remembers what has been read.

Things You'll Need

• Something to read.

Instructions

1. Find a topic that interests you and then find and relatively short article on the subject. Read the first sentence of the article, slowly, word by word. Make sure that you know and attach a meaning to each word that you read. Read the sentence again and know that you understand the meaning, before you move on. Finish the article using this exercise.

2. Use the same article. While reading the article again, use the picture or image part of your mind to create images associated with what you are reading. Make a movie in your mind of the article that you are reading as you read. Read slowly and take your time. Make the images bright and recognizable. You are the director, the caster, and the producer.

3. Read the same article, and add feeling and emotions to the words. Not all of the words will have an emotional attachment. When you study the words, though, you will find that most of them do have an emotional quality to them, even if the article is something that seems dry. Like it is about technology or recycling.

4. Read the article again and add sounds. Where ever there is a word that you can attach a sound to imagine the sound in your mind as your read the word. Some articles will not have any sound words in them, but you will find that most do.

5. Read the article again and attach the meaning, image, emotion and sound to each word and sentence. After you have read the article, write down what the article is about in one paragraph. Read the paragraph back to yourself and ask yourself if it makes sense and if it truly is a summary of the article. If you don't think that it is, then read the article again and modify the summary paragraph until you are satisfied with it.

6. Practice these exercises with other articles. Then go to books. Read chapter by chapter. If you start at a chapter and finish a chapter for a reading session, then your comprehension will be a lot better and may continue to improve until you can just pick up and read the book where you stopped, last.

Tips & Warnings

• Reading exercises your eye muscles.

• Reading improves your vocabulary.

• Reading strengthens the thinking processes.

• Reading may improve your peripheral vision.

Resources

• 10 Tips To Read More & Read Better