Improving your reading comprehinsion skills
Reading the text on purpose and trying to understand all its meanings deeply is an effortful activity. Reading a text without any specific reading but just in a passive way will not improve students comprehension skills. How could students improve these skills? How students become more active texts readers?
The candidates of Ellinomatheia exams should complete exercises such as the following: True or false, gap filling and matching exercises. Moreover, they should write full answers to questions on the text. Reading carefully the questions and exercises they should complete is a prerequisite. In this way, they willengage with the text more actively.
Exam time for reading comprehension is limited. Therefore, all candidates must make good use of it.
Tips for understanding texts easily
Being focused without distractions
Is it easy for students to keep their mind undistracted while reading a text? In order for them to engage with the text, they should try to avoid any other thoughts, such as: “What will they eat afterwards?”, “Where will they go afterwards?”, “What happened at school in the morning?”. Trying to concentrate all their concentration to the text is a prerequisite.
For candidates of Ellinomatheia exams, the rooms are set up according to the exams rules and regulations. Noise is avoided inside and outside the exam classroom.
Vocabulary and the main idea
It is very important for the students to identify the main idea. How? Key words help them focus on the main idea. What are the key words? Key words describe the main idea. They work as keys that make the author’s goal clear. For example, texts related to peace, war, environment, education will include vocabulary related to this topic.
How is a text organized?
There are some basic types of organization.
Chronological order:
Students will find a lot of time order words. There will be a timeline of an event, a story presented in a chronological order.
Cause – Result:
Students will find the reasons and the consequence of a topic. Why has something happened? What are the results of a problem, an event? For instance, the causes and the consequences of unemployment, the causes of fire and its results to the environment.
Comparison (Similarities – Differences):
The text is organised on the similarities and the differences of a topic. For instance, “Holidays in the mountains or holidays by the sea?”, “Travelling by plane or by boat?”.
Reading comprehension during Ellinomatheia
Candidates of Ellinomatheia exams must read carefully questions and exercises they should complete. In this way, they will engage with the text more actively. The exam time for reading comprehension is limited.
Good luck to all the candidates of Ellinomatheia Exams!
Λεξιλόγιο – Vocabulary
1/ κατανοώ = to comprehend
2/ η κατανόηση = comprehension
3/ για παράδειγμα = for example
4/ συγκεντρώνομαι = to focus on
5/ το κείμενο = text
