What are “comprehension strategies”?

Comprehension strategies are methods that individuals use to help make sense of text, facilitating deeper understanding and engagement with the material. These strategies enable readers to actively interact with what they are reading, allowing them to connect prior knowledge, summarize information, ask questions, and clarify meanings as needed.

These skills increase a reader’s ability to interpret and analyze the content, leading to improved retention and insight into the text. By utilizing comprehension strategies, readers become more adept at navigating complex ideas, identifying key themes, and drawing conclusions from the information presented.

Other choices do touch on aspects of literacy but do not accurately describe the essence of comprehension strategies. Memorizing text, while useful, does not necessarily lead to understanding. Strategies for developing phonics skills focus more on decoding words rather than comprehending them. Similarly, tools for enhancing vocabulary, while beneficial, are more about word knowledge than the overarching strategy for understanding text as a whole.