English · Chapter 2
Study notes aligned to the official NEB syllabus.
Reading comprehension tests whether you can understand a passage you have never seen before and answer questions on it accurately. In the Grade 11 paper this is usually one unseen passage followed by five questions, often worth two marks each. The passage may be factual (about a planet, an animal or a place), argumentative (putting a point of view), or a short narrative. You are not expected to know the topic beforehand. Everything you need is in the text; your job is to find it and express it clearly. The marks are reliable, because most answers can be located and checked against the passage itself.
Efficient comprehension uses two kinds of reading, and the exam rewards using both.
Skimming is fast reading for the general sense. Run your eyes over the whole passage once, taking in the title, the first and last sentence of each paragraph, and any names, dates or numbers. Do not read every word. After skimming you should be able to say in one sentence what the passage is about and roughly how it is organised.
Scanning is targeted reading to find one specific piece of information. After you read a question, go back into the passage and look only for the key word or idea it asks about, ignoring everything else. If a question asks "how large is Jupiter", scan for large, largest, size, diameter or a number, and read only the sentence around it. You rarely need to reread the whole passage for each question.
The reliable order is: skim the passage once, read all five questions, then answer them one by one, scanning back into the text for each. Because comprehension questions usually follow the sequence of the passage, answering in order helps you scan to the right place quickly.