tips for improving reading comprehension / cutting through brain fog / dealing with a language processing disorder
aka I tried paying attention to what I do when reading a text & hereâs what I came up with
make sure you know what pronouns, & other terms that are in reference to something else, are referring to. look earlier in the sentence or paragraph to find the referents of words like âit,â âthat,â âthese,â âwhich,â âthey,â etc. insert the referent back into the sentence if you need to.
pay special attention to words that explain relationships between things, facts, or ideas. words and phrases such as âsimilarly,â âhowever,â âalthough,â âstill,â âin contrast,â âdespite,â etc. will help you understand how a writer wants a proposition to be evaluated in relation to something thatâs already been statedâas evidence, as a counterpoint, as something in tension or in accordance with something else, etc.
map things out spatially. things being contrasted are further apart from each other in your mental space, one thing that leads to or causes another is an arrow pointing in a given direction, something thatâs a subgroup of something else is a circle within a circle, and so on. your system may be similar to or different than this.
if a parenthetical aside breaks up a sentence and you canât pick the thread of it back up, try reading and understanding the sentence up through the aside, then removing the aside and just reading the first and second parts of the sentence as if there were no interruption.
once you think youâve understood the general idea of what a sentence, paragraph, or essay is about, go back and read it again, keeping the main point in mind, and ask yourself how everything you read contributes to that point. if youâre having trouble with certain parts of a text, this will probably help you pick up more detail the second time around.
if youâre having trouble processing a clause, try forging ahead and finishing the sentenceâyou may have been parsing something incorrectly based on incomplete information, & the remaining bit of the sentence could clear that up.
keep track of any confusion or questions that you have as you read and see if theyâre resolved or answered later in the text.
read a difficult sentence aloud if youâre having trouble parsing itâforcing yourself to take note of the prosodic contours of a sentence may help you with its syntax, since prosodic cues such as pauses and rising or falling intonation often correspond with syntactic boundaries.
restructure sentences or space them out differently, either mentally or using word processing software, in whatever way makes it easier for you to understand them (e.g. breaking longer sentences up or combining shorter sentences, making parentheticals into their own sentences, etc.)
have provision for just saying âthis is poorly writtenâ. some writers are very bad at making the referents of their pronouns clear, make a lot of errors of verb/preposition collocation, use conjunctive adverbs (e.g. âhoweverâ) in ways that donât make sense to describe the relationship between the two points that theyâre making, &c. correct the sentence, read it back through again, and move on
take a break. if youâve been reading for a while you might be too tired or frustrated to make sense of something, or you may be too determined to parse a sentence (especially a syntactically or semantically ambiguous one) in a way that doesnât make sense. come back when you have a clearer mind.
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