What Comprehension Strategies Are

Comprehension strategies foster active reading. The strategies are designed  

• to guide a reader to become more self-aware of one’s self-understanding during reading,

• to become more in control of that understanding,

• to create images related to contents,

• to make graphic representations,

• to write summaries,

• to answer questions, or

• to make up questions.

Depending on what type it is, a strategy can be implemented

1. before

2. during or

3. after

reading a text.

Skilled readers may invent strategies that help them understand and remember what they read. Most readers, however, do not spontaneously invent these strategies. Unless they are explicitly taught to apply cognitive procedures they are not likely to learn, develop, or use them.

Readers at all levels, in fact, can benefit from explicit comprehension strategy instruction. A teacher begins by demonstrating or modeling a strategy. In some cases, the instruction is reciprocalor transactional, meaning that the teacher first performs the procedures and then the students gradually learn to implement them on their own. The process by which a student adopts  the strategy is often a gradual one.

Readers are first able to experience the construction of meaning by an expert reader, the teacher. As readers learn to take control of their own reading by practicing and acquiring cognitive strategy procedures, they gradually internalize the strategies and achieve independent mastery.