Schools everywhere are keen on improving the reading comprehension skills of its students. This is important because once they graduate, students need to be able to pick up a book on any subject, be it science, technology, social studies and the like and be able to understand the author and be able to put what they have learnt into practice. Hence any insights into the mechanism of understanding by the human brain can go a long way in improving reading comprehension skills.

It is the opinion of the author of this article that the brain comprehends what is being read by the eyes by way of the visual sensory perceptors that transmit the signals to the brain which in turn de-codes what is being read by way of the print. Hence visual sensory inputs form the basis for understanding and comprehension when one reads a book, for example. To improve the comprehension skills, there are therefore two obvious routes. The first route is to improve how the brain decodes the sensory input and prevent loss of data therein or increase the speed and quality of the de-coding. This might be very difficult to accomplish. The second method is to improve the strength of the visual signal that is being sent to the brain and that might be very difficult to accomplish also.

There is then another method. And that is to submit to the brain, signals from additional sensory routes for the same subject at hand. For example, in addition to visual signals, if one could also provide audible signals to the brain for the same subject matter, now the brain gets double the volume of sensory data and comprehension and understanding can be vastly improved. This can be practically accomplished by reading the book loudly. Now your eyes transmit data to the brain and your ears that hear your reading aloud voice transmits audible data to your brain and you can improve comprehension much better. Hence reading textbooks louder rather than silently is the preferred method.

A case in point supporting the above hypothesis is the small raised pictures of various sensory feelings of touch that is provided to toddlers and pre-kindergarten kids. They usually come in small booklets that will, for example have the picture of a fur with a small sample of fur glued to the picture, with the word furry written on it and the parent would read aloud the word fur to the child. The same is then performed for adjectives of silky, smooth, rough and so on. Now the child sends to the brain, not only visible and audible signals but touch signals as well. Thus increasing the number of sensory inputs improves comprehension and understanding greatly.

Source: http://articlewonders.com

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