Maria
Certified Tutor
Undergraduate Degree: Loyola University Maryland - Bachelors, German, Writing Minor
learning languages, linguistics, reading
College English
Comparative Literature
Conversational German
German 1
German 2
German 3
German 4
High School English
How do you help students who are struggling with reading comprehension?
There is far more than one way to read a text. For particularly tricky sections of a reading, we might do a bit of translation work or make a simplified summary before discussing the text more thoroughly. Prompting questions are always aimed at getting the student to critically consider the text and practice working it out for themselves; mind mapping, list making and notecard writing can often be beneficial in this regard. Students struggling with longer works such as novels may require additional study sources, for instance, student literature workbooks, dual translations, or literary reviews, to provide them more context for their close reading of it. If the difficulty stems from a work's manner of language rather than its thematic content, however, we might take a look at the rhetoric, archaic use of language and key linguistic concepts found in the text to start demystifying the text's structure and style and improve its readability.